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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


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THE   ART   OF 
NEWSPAPER    MAKING 

THREE  LECTURES 


BY 

CHARLES  A.   DANA 


NEW    YORK 

D.    APPLETON    AND    COMPANY 

189s 


Copyright,  1895, 
Bv  D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY. 


4775- 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

The  Modern  American  Newspaper  ,  .  .  i 
The  Profession  of  Journalism  .  .  .  .25 
The  Making  of  a  Newspaper  Man  .        .        .66 


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THE   MODERN 
AMERICAN   NEWSPAPER. 

A  Lecture  delivered  before  the 

Wisconsin  Editorial  Association^  at  Milwaukee, 

on  Tuesday,  July  24,  1888. 


It  rarely  happens  to  a  man  engaged 
in  the  active  combats  of  life,  to  whom 
every  day  is  a  kind  of  march  and  every 
night  a  sort  of  bivouac,  to  receive  an 
invitation  from  newspapers  of  all  par- 
ties, representing  all  political  organiza- 
tions and  almost  all  forms  of  religion 
known  in  our  country — all  asking  this 
man  to  come  to  Wisconsin  to  see  them  ; 
and  I  have  come  with  the  greatest  pleas- 
ure, although  by  no  means  without  tim- 
idity. I  know  the  men  of  Wisconsin 
of  old.     I  have  seen  them  on  the  battle- 


2       THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

field,  and  I  never  saw  one  that  flinched 
from  a  danger  or  retreated  before  a  foe. 

The  literature  of  Wisconsin  I  am 
also  somewhat  familiar  with,  especially 
that  branch  of  it  which  is  known  as 
the  Milwaukee  School  of  Lady  Poets. 
They  do  honor  to  the  State.  They 
have  added  something  to  American  lit- 
erature, and  if  now  and  then  they  have 
been  carried  away  by  a  little  ardor  of 
feeling  or  slight  excess  of  imagination,  we 
must  allow  that  to  the  zeal  of  beginners 
bent  on  winning  the  laurel  at  any  cost. 

It  is  now  a  good  many  years  ago  since 
I  began  to  edit  a  newspaper.  I  began 
with  a  weekly  literary  paper ;  I  mean  by 
weekly  that  it  was  published  once  in 
seven  days.  Then  it  was  printed  on  a 
hand  press,  and  it  took  two  men  to  run 
this  press,  one  to  pull  the  press  and  make 
the  impressions,  and  another  to  furnish 
the  ink  and  take  off  the  paper  when  it 
was  printed ;  and  of  that  paper,  with 
great  industry  and  care,  we  were  able  to 


THE  MODERN-  NEWSPAPER.  3 

print  in  a  day,  and  one  side  at  a  time,  five 
hundred  copies,  and  that  was  about  the 
extent  of  the  circulation  ;  and  if  we  got 
rid  of  the  whole  five  hundred,  we  thought 
we  were  doing  a  first-class  business. 
When  we  contrast  that  press  with  the 
great  printing  machines  which  modern 
ingenuity  and  genius — genius  not  ex- 
ceeded in  any  branch  of  human  effort — 
have  put  at  the  service  of  the  newspaper 
profession,  we  may  well  be  astonished  at 
the  change ;  printing  presses  that  run 
literally  at  the  rate  of  a  mile  a  minute — 
that  is  the  actual  speed  at  which  these 
machines  revolve  and  pursue  their  beauti- 
ful, industrious,  and  never-failing  toil ; 
and  they  print  from  twenty  to  sixty 
thousand  great  sheets  an  hour,  printing 
at  each  operation  both  sides  of  the  pa- 
per. 

The  intellectual  outfit  of  a  modern 
newspaper  presents  just  as  great  a  con- 
trast to  that  which  was  known  forty  or 
fifty  years  ago,  as  the  mechanical  outfit 


4      THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

does.  You  go  into  the  office  of  such  a 
paper,  for  instance,  as  the  New  York 
Tribune  and  you  will  find  there  a  small 
army  of  intellectual  laborers,  each  ap- 
pointed to  his  particular  task,  each  pur- 
suing his  peculiar  duty,  and  all  combin- 
ing to  produce  every  morning  that  won- 
derful result  which  we  may  well  call 
"the  modern  newspaper."  Former  times 
knew  nothing  of  it.  It  is  a  thing  entirely 
beyond  the  conception  of  the  people  of 
forty  or  fifty  years  ago.  There  is  in  such 
an  establishment,  in  the  first  place,  a 
trained  staff  of  reporters,  accomplished 
men,  men  familiar  with  every  branch  of 
study  that  intellectual  young  men  ordina- 
rily devote  themselves  to,  men  who  have 
prepared  themselves  either  by  college 
studies  or  by  practical  life  in  their  depart- 
ments for  the  peculiar  duty  that  they 
have  undertaken ;  and  they  are  men  of 
extraordinary  talent,  knowing  the  world 
well,  able  to  see  through  a  deception,  and 
sometimes  able    to   set   one   up.      Then 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER. 


5 


there  is  the  staff  of  correspondents  in 
other  places  and  in  other  countries. 
Why,  it  will  happen  to  the  editor  of  a 
New  York  paper,  for  instance,  to  go 
down  to  his  office  in  the  morning  and  to 
send  a  man  from  London  to  St.  Peters- 
burg in  order  to  report  something  that 
is  going  to  happen  four  or  five  days  later. 
The  modern  newspaper  literally  has  its 
fingers  reaching  out  toward  every  quar- 
ter of  the  globe,  and  every  finger  is  sen- 
sitive and  every  nerve  brings  back  the 
treasures  of  intellectual  wealth  that  are 
stored  up  there,  and  a  photograph  of 
the  occurrences  of  life  that  are  there 
taking  place.  And  then  there  is  a 
separate  corps  of  writers,  editorial 
writers,  each  man  having  his  own  special 
line  of  subjects,  literary,  religious,  scien- 
tific, artistic,  historical,  political ;  and 
each  peculiarly  qualified  by  special 
knowledge  and  training  for  that  particu- 
lar department  of  the  great  work. 

The  pecuniary  expenditure  of  such  a 

2 


6      THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

newspaper  is  something  enormous.  It 
will  not  be  excessive  if  I  put  down  the 
expenditure  of  such  a  paper  as  the  New 
York  Tribune  or  New  York  Herald  at 
an  average  of  from  $20,000  to  $35,000  a 
week.  And  it  is  the  concentration  of  all 
that  talent  and  of  all  these  resources,  di- 
rected by  trained  intellect,  watching  all 
the  occurrences  of  the  world,  in  order  to 
bring  them  together  and  present  them  to 
the  public  every  day,  that  produces  the 
phenomenon  that  we  call  the  modern 
newspaper. 

Of  course,  such  a  fact,  with  this  im- 
mense expenditure  and  this  great  con- 
centration of  varied  intellectual  faculties, 
is  only  possible  in  a  very  populous  coun- 
try where  civilization  is  far  advanced, 
and  where  the  people  everywhere  de- 
mand that  kind  of  intellectual  product, 
that  great  work  of  human  art  which  we 
call  a  modern  newspaper.  In  a  country 
thinly  settled,  in  a  poor  country,  the 
thing  could  not  be   produced   nor   paid 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER.  y 

for  ;  neither  could  we  find  that  amount 
of  intelligence  and  intellectual  cultivation 
which  is  requisite  in  order  to  accom- 
plish such  a  result.  It  is  then  the  coun- 
try which  furnishes  the  power  to  the 
editor  and  proprietor  of  a  newspaper  to 
perform  this  great  intellectual  work  ;  and 
it  is  a  sure  mark  of  high  intellectual  de- 
velopment that  any  country  is  able  to 
provide  such  a  thing  and  to  support  it, 
and  not  merely  to  support  one  or  two 
papers,  such  as  the  Tribune  and  the  Her- 
ald, which  I  have  mentioned,  but  many 
others  in  various  large  cities,  all  similarly 
worthy  to  be  held  up  to  your  admiration 
as  specimens  of  the  highest  form  of  hu- 
man intellectual  production  that  we  are 
yet  acquainted  with. 

The  multiplicity  of  newspapers  is  also 
another  feature  of  our  American  civiliza- 
tion. The  number  of  them  here  far  ex- 
ceeds the  number  of  those  found  in  any 
other  land.  The  most  populous  coun- 
tries of  Europe,  Germany  and  England, 


8      THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

have  not  so  many  newspapers  in  propor- 
tion to  the  population  as  we  have  in  this 
country ;  nor  are  those  of  the  first  rank 
scattered  abroad  in  such  a  variety  of 
places  as  here.  That  is  another  peculiar- 
ity of  the  United  States.  In  the  British 
kingdom  we  find  three  or  four  papers  in 
London,  one  or  two  in  Edinburgh,  and 
one  or  two  in  Manchester,  so  that  in  the 
whole  of  the  British  Islands  there  are  not 
more  than  six  or  seven  newspapers  which 
are  conducted  upon  anything  like  the 
scale  which  I  have  attempted  to  describe. 
The  people  don't  want  them  ;  they  are 
not  able  to  support  them  ;  they  are  not  in 
a  condition  to  require  them.  They  are 
satisfied  for  the  most  part  with  an  infe- 
rior kind  of  newspaper  which  is  produced 
in  their  own  town,  or  with  the  London 
newspaper  which  they  get  at  a  later  hour 
in  the  day.  In  England  also  there  is  this 
great  difference,  that  there  is  a  great 
reading  of  weekly  newspapers ;  people 
are  willing  to  wait  a  week  there  to  find 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER.  g 

out  the  news.  The  world  might  be  revo- 
lutionized and  they  would  not  know 
it  until  their  weekly  newspaper  came 
around.  In  this  country  there  is  no  town 
of  any  importance  which  has  not  from 
one  to  half  a  dozen  daily  papers.  But  it 
is  not  the  case  in  England,  neither  is  it 
the  case  in  Germany,  which  is  the  coun- 
try next  to  England  in  point  of  general 
intelligence.  There  are  very  few  first- 
rate  papers  in  Germany,  not  one  any- 
where which  is  to  be  compared  to  the 
American  newspaper  in  the  variety  of 
news  that  it  furnishes,  in  the  amount  of 
resources  that  are  applied  to  it,  or  gener- 
ally in  the  ability  with  which  it  is  con- 
ducted. The  German  newspapers  are 
like  the  German  learned  men,  exceed- 
ingly learned  but  not  always  in  contact 
with  the  living  sentiment  of  the  people. 
They  pursue  their  own  theories  remote 
from  the  people  and  do  not  feel  their 
pulse  and  know  their  thoughts  and  un- 
derstand their  hearts  at  all  times.     This 


10    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

is  the  business  of  the  American  editor. 
He  must  know  what  the  people  think ; 
he  must  know  what  they  feel,  and  he 
must  speak  their  ideas,  or  his  whole  work 
will  be  in  vain.  There  is  no  question  but 
that  the  atmosphere  of  freedom  is  essen- 
tial to  the  production  of  a  first-rate  news- 
paper. 

A  country  where  there  is  anything 
approaching  to  despotism,  either  politi- 
cally or  socially,  is  not  suited  to  the 
growth  of  newspapers.  That  is  one  rea- 
son why  there  are  so  many  of  them  in 
this  country  and  of  such  great  excellence. 
It  is  the  freedom,  it  is  the  ability  to  grow, 
which  belongs  to  American  things,  and 
does  not  belong  in  the  same  sense,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  to  things  in  other  coun- 
tries. We  say,  for  instance,  that  France 
is  a  free  country.  It  is  a  republic  cer- 
tainly, and  yet,  when  you  come  to  take  a 
French  newspaper,  you  find  that  it  is  al- 
together upon  a  lower  plane  ;  the  note  is 
pitched  in  another  key  ;  it  is  not  the  same 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER,  u 

sort  of  combination.  It  is  like  the  old- 
fashioned  newspapers  which  were  seen 
in  this  country  and  England  forty  or  fifty 
years  ago.  There  will  be  one  powerful, 
well-written  essay  which  is  called  an  edi- 
torial, and  the  rest  of  the  paper  will  be 
comparatively  inferior.  The  collection 
of  news  will  be  exceedingly  imperfect. 
There  is  no  French  newspaper  to  be 
compared,  for  instance,  to  the  Tribune 
or  the  Herald,  in  the  universality  of  its 
reports,  in  the  industry  with  which  they 
are  collected,  or  in  the  general  extent  and 
accuracy  of  the  news  which  it  furnishes. 
The  reason  for  this  fact  I  find  in  the  great 
social  freedom  that  exists  in  this  country, 
where  every  intellectual  plant  grows 
vigorously  and  bears  its  fruit  without 
hindrance  from  any  quarter. 

The  newspaper  must  be  founded  upon 
human  nature.  It  must  correspond  to 
the  wants  of  the  people.  It  must  furnish 
that  sort  of  information  which  the  people 
demand,  or  else  it  never  can  be  success- 


12    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

ful.  The  first  thing  which  an  editor  must 
look  for  is  news.  If  the  newspaper  has 
not  the  news,  it  may  have  everything 
else,  yet  it  will  be  comparatively  unsuc- 
cessful ;  and  by  news  I  mean  everything 
that  occurs,  everything  which  is  of  hu- 
man interest,  and  which  is  of  sufficient 
importance  to  arrest  and  absorb  the  at- 
tention of  the  public  or  of  any  consider- 
able  part  of  it.  There  is  a  great  disposi- 
tion in  some  quarters  to  say  that  the 
newspapers  ought  to  limit  the  amount  of 
news  that  they  print ;  that  certain  kinds 
of  news  ought  not  to  be  published.  I  do 
not  know  how  that  is.  I  am  not  prepared 
to  maintain  any  abstract  proposition  in 
that  line  ;  but  I  have  always  felt  that 
whatever  the  Divine  Providence  per- 
mitted to  occur  I  was  not  too  proud  to 
report. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  of  late 
years  about  the  sort  of  education  that  the 
journalist  should  be  provided  with,  and 
some  of  the  colleges   have   even   estab- 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER,  13 

lished  professorships  of  journalism.  On 
the  other  hand,  I  heard  a  very  able  and 
successful  journalist  the  other  day,  who 
said  that  special  studies  in  a  university 
would  be  of  no  use  whatever,  that  the 
only  post-graduate  school  for  a  journalist 
was  a  newspaper  office.  That  is  a  ques- 
tion worth  looking  at. 

The  intellectual  professions,  accord- 
ing to  the  old  nomenclature,  include  cler- 
gymen, lawyers,  and  doctors.  A  news- 
paper man,  the  journalist,  is  new  ;  he  is  a 
modern  product.  When  the  old  division 
of  intellectual  occupations  was  made,  and 
the  learned  were  partitioned  off  into  cler- 
gymen, doctors,  and  lawyers,  there  was 
no  such  thing  as  a  newspaper  man.  So- 
ciety had  not  got  sufficiently  advanced 
to  have  newspapers,  and  there  was  no 
occasion  for  intellectual  men  to  think  of 
such  a  thing.  But  now  there  must  be 
newspapers,  and  men  must  be  taught, 
educated,  and  trained  to  make  them,  and 

how  shall  that  be  done?     There  is  one 
3 


14 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


remarkable  thing  about  the  education 
that  a  newspaper  man  requires.  It  must 
be  universal.  He  must  know  a  great 
many  things,  and  the  better  he  knows 
them  the  better  he  will  be  in  his  profes- 
sion. There  is  no  chance  for  an  ignora- 
mus in  that  trade.  We  have  all  heard  of 
the  family  where  the  smartest  boy  was 
made  a  lawyer,  and  the  next  smartest 
was  made  a  doctor,  and  the  one  that  was 
not  good  for  much  of  anything  they  made 
a  minister.  In  my  judgment  a  very  mis- 
taken application  of  the  third  young  man, 
because,  if  there  is  any  occupation  which 
ought  to  command  the  highest  talents  of 
man,  it  is  that  occupation  which  teaches 
us  how  to  live  in  this  life  and  how  to 
hope  for  another.  But  the  educated 
newspaper  man  must  be  qualified  to  dis- 
cuss the  questions  which  the  clergyman 
has  to  discuss.  He  must  be  qualified  to 
judge  of  the  science  of  the  physician, 
and  he  must  even  be  able  to  rise  to  those 
sublime  intellectual  complications  which 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER.  15 

make  a  great  lawyer.  A  journalist  must 
be  an  all-around  man.  He  must  know 
whether  the  theology  of  the  parson  is 
sound,  whether  the  physiology  of  the 
doctor  is  genuine,  and  whether  the  law 
of  the  lawyer  is  good  law  or  not.  His 
education,  accordingly,  should  be  exceed- 
ingly extensive.  If  possible,  he  should 
be  sent  to  college.  He  should  learn 
everything  that  the  college  has  to  teach  ; 
but,  what  is  more  important,  he  should 
be  sent  to  the  school  of  practical  life  and 
of  active  and  actual  business. 

The  man  in  this  world  who  is  going 
to  play  a  part  as  a  teacher  and  adviser  to 
the  public  must  know,  if  he  is  to  teach 
wisely  and  successfully,  what  are  the  in- 
terests, what  are  the  purposes,  what  are 
the  ideas,  and  what  are  the  needs  of  the 
people  that  he  is  to  address  and  instruct. 
College  education  is  of  high  value  ;  the 
life  of  the  family,  whatever  cultivates  the 
affections,  is  of  a  higher  value ;  but  the 
actual   contact   of    business,   the    under- 


1 6    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

standing  the  rules  of  business  and  the 
means  and  methods  of  business,  I  think 
are  quite  as  necessary  to  the  newspaper 
man.  So  that,  after  he  has  got  through 
with  college,  after  he  has  had  the  best 
school  education  that  his  father  and  his 
friends  can  give  him,  how  is  there  any- 
chance  for  a  special  instruction  in  jour- 
nalism to  be  added  to  his  college  course  ? 
How  is  that  going  to  do  him  any  great 
good  ?  How  is  a  professor  who  teaches 
journalism,  and  who  sits  up  in  his  chair 
and  delivers  generalities  on  the  subject, 
going  to  help  forward  the  ambitious 
young  man  who  is  anxious  to  lay  hold  of 
one  of  the  great  prizes — for  there  are 
great  prizes — that  are  to  be  drawn  in  this 
intellectual  lottery  ?  I  do  not  see  how 
a  college  instruction  in  journaHsm  can 
be  of  any  adequate  practical  use.  The 
school  which  takes  the  young  minister 
and  carries  him  through  a  course  of 
theology,  church  history,  homiletics,  dia- 
lectics,    philosophy,    and     metaphysics. 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER.  ly 

instructs  him  in  the  essentials  of  his  pro- 
fession, all  after  his  college  course  is 
completed.  So  it  is  in  the  case  of  a  phy- 
sician. He  studies  anatomy,  physiology, 
and  chemistry,  and  fits  himself  in  that 
way  for  the  professional  work  that  he  is 
to  perform.  But  it  is  impossible,  in  my 
judgment,  that  there  should  be  any  spe- 
cial'school  which  will  take  a  young  man 
intending  to  pursue  the  profession  of 
journalism,  after  he  has  finished  his  col- 
lege studies,  and  give  him  much  valuable 
instruction  in  the  duties  and  labors  of  his 
future  professional  life,  and  in  that  gen- 
eral experience  in  business  which  I  rec- 
ommend as  most  indispensable.  There 
is  only  one  school  for  that  purpose,  and 
that  is  the  newspaper  oflfice,  and  the  bet- 
ter the  newspaper  office,  the  more  com- 
plete, the  more  varied,  and  the  more 
extensive  the  labors  that  it  aims  at  and 
performs,  and  the  better  educated  the 
young  man  who  is  going  to  learn  his 
trade  there,  the  more  effectually  will  he 


1 8    THE  ART  OF   NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

earn  it.  The  newspaper  office  is  the 
best  post-graduate  college  that  the  stu- 
dent of  the  newspaper  profession  can 
have.  Let  him  get  the  best  education 
possible  and  then  go  to  work  in  a  news- 
paper office,  and  the  better  the  editor  the 
better  the  instruction. 

There  is  no  system  of  maxims  or  pro- 
fessional rules  that  I  know  of  that  is  laid 
down  for  the  guidance  of  the  journalist. 
The  physician  has  his  system  of  ethics 
and  that  sublime  oath  of  Hippocrates 
which  human  wisdom  has  never  tran- 
scended. The  lawyer  also  has  his  code 
of  ethics,  and  the  rules  of  the  courts  and 
the  rules  of  practice  which  he  is  in- 
structed in ;  but  I  have  never  met  with  a 
system  of  maxims  that  seemed  to  me  to 
be  perfectly  adapted  to  the  general  di- 
rection of  a  newspaper  man ;  and  I  have 
written  down  a  few  principles  which  oc- 
curred to  me,  which,  with  your  permission, 
gentlemen,  I  will  read  for  the  benefit  of 
the  young  newspaper  men  here  to-night : 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER.  ig 

I.  Get  the  news,  get  all  the  news,  and 
nothing  but  the  news. 

II.  Copy  nothing  from  another  pub- 
lication without  perfect  credit. 

III.  Never  print  an  interview  without 
the  knowledge  and  consent  of  the  party 
interviewed. 

IV.  Never  print  a  paid  advertisement 
as  news  matter.  Let  every  advertise- 
ment appear  as  an  advertisement ;  no 
sailing  under  false  colors. 

V.  Never  attack  the  weak  or  the  de- 
fenseless, either  by  argument,  by  invec- 
tive, or  by  ridicule,  unless  there  is  some 
absolute  public  necessity  for  so  doing. 

VI.  Fight  for  your  opinions,  but  do 
not  believe  that  they  contain  the  whole 
truth  or  the  only  truth. 

VII.  Support  your  party,  if  you  have 
one.  But  do  not  think  all  the  good  men 
are  in  it  and  all  the  bad  ones  outside 
of  it. 

VIII.  Above  all,  know  and  believe 
that  humanity  is  advancing  ;   that  there 


20    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER   MAKING. 

is  progress  in  human  life  and  human 
affairs  ;  and  that,  as  sure  as  God  lives, 
the  future  will  be  greater  and  better  than 
the  present  or  the  past. 

That  is  a  pretty  general  code,  but  it 
seems  to  me  it  covers  the  case  very  well. 

There  is  another  point  that  I  would 
like  to  touch  upon,  and  that  is  the  ques- 
tion of  the  power  of  the  press.  We  un- 
derstand that  the  press  is  a  powerful 
agent.  It  takes  men  when  their  informa- 
tion is  incomplete,  when  their  reasoning 
has  not  yet  been  worked  out,  when  their 
opinions  are  not  yet  fixed,  and  it  suggests 
and  intimates  and  insinuates  an  opinion 
and  a  judgment  which  oftentimes  the 
man,  unless  he  is  a  man  of  great  intelli- 
gence  and  force  of  character,  adopts  as 
something  established  and  concluded. 
That  is  one  part  of  the  power  of  the 
press.  It  is  a  power  and  influence  which 
is  exercised  over  the  minds  of  people, 
often  without  any  knowledge  or  any 
criticism  on  the  part  of  the  person  who 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER.  2 1 

is  subject  to  it.  That  is  in  the  nature  of 
the  case.  I  do  not  see  how  it  can  be 
changed,  except  as  the  individual  be- 
comes more  intelligent  and  more  able  to 
form  and  guide  his  own  judgment,  and 
to  emancipate  himself  from  this  sort  of  "7 

suggestive  influence  and  control.  But 
that  does  not  happen  to  everybody.     In  \ 

that  way  there  is  a  real  and  remarkable 
power  in  the  press,  and  it  is  a  power  that 
inspires  me  always  with  a  very  solemn 
sense  of  responsibility.  Here  you  take 
the  mind  of  a  man,  and  without  his  know- 
ing it  you  shape  it,  you  direct  it,  you 
send  him  along  on  a  road  which  he  does 
not  know,  and,  very  often,  which  you  do 
not  know.  That,  however,  is  not  what  I 
mean  when  I  speak  of  the  power  of  the 
press  ;  and  the  power  that  I  am  now  re- 
ferring to  is  something  which  may  be  of 
much  greater  importance. 

To  go  back  a  few  years,  I  remember 
when  we  had  in  this  country  an  immense 
and  far-reaching  controversy  which  took 


22    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

hold  of  the  hearts  and  lives  of  the  whole 
people,  over  the  question  of  slavery. 
Then  the  press  was  divided,  some  on  one 
side  and  some  on  the  other,  but  those 
who  were  on  the  other  are  not  so  proud 
of  it  now.  There  was  a  great  power, 
and  for  the  most  part  it  was  exercised  by 
the  press  for  the  good  of  the  people,  and 
we  rejoice  now,  as  we  look  back  upon 
that  mighty  controversy,  those  of  us 
whose  fortune  it  was  to  bear  some  part 
in  it,  at  the  great  result  that  was  finally 
achieved — achieved  as  it  was  through 
blood  and  fire  and  tears  that  have  left 
upon  this  country  and  upon  the  history 
of  the  world  a  mark  that  never  will  be 
obliterated.  That  is  what  I  mean  by  the 
power  of  the  press  ;  the  power  of  speak- 
ing out  the  sentiment  of  the  people,  the 
voice  of  justice,  the  inspiration  of  wis- 
dom, the  determination  of  patriotism, 
and  the  heart  of  the  whole  people.  But 
if  the  press  goes  wrong  in  such  cases,  as 
those  friends  of  ours  did  who  were  on 


THE  MODERN  NEWSPAPER. 


23 


the  other  side  in  that  controversy,  their 
judgment,  their  labor,  their  power  is 
nothing.  It  is  wiped  out.  You  look  for 
it  and  it  is  there  no  longer,  and  all  their 
efforts  have  disappeared  as  the  dew  dis- 
appears when  the  sun  rises. 

There  is,  however,  another  function 
of  the  press  which  is  connected  with  this 
that  I  have  now  been  speaking  of,  and 
which  is  perhaps  even  more  momentous. 
In  this  free  country  our  Constitution 
puts  into  the  hands  of  the  executive 
officers  of  the  Government  a  tremendous 
authority.  There  is  no  king,  no  em- 
peror, no  autocrat  in  the  world  who 
wields  such  authority,  such  power,  as 
the  President  of  the  United  States.  We 
will  suppose  the  time  should  come — God 
forbid  that  it  ever  should  come — that 
there  should  be  in  the  post  of  the  Presi- 
dent a  man  who  has  gained  such  influ- 
ence over  the  hearts  of  the  whole  people 
that  they  become  deaf  to  the  suggestions 
of  wisdom,  and  give  to  his  ambition  a 


24 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


free  sway  and  an  open  field.  Suppose 
that  he  sets  aside,  little  by  little,  the 
restraints  of  the  Constitution.  Suppose 
that  he  tramples  upon  that  great  prin- 
ciple of  personal  liberty  which  is  the 
noblest  inheritance  that  our  fathers  have 
left  us,  because  it  is  the  very  life  of  the 
republic  ;  suppose  that  he  tramples  down 
that  principle  ;  the  executive  power  is  in 
his  hands,  even  the  courts  incline  to  sub- 
serviency, the  army  follows  and  obeys 
him.  Where,  then,  is  the  safeguard  of 
the  public  liberty  against  his  ambition  ? 
It  is  in  the  press.  It  is  in  the  free  press. 
When  every  other  bulwark  is  gone,  the 
free  press  will  remain  to  preserve  the 
liberties  that  we  mean  shall  be  handed 
down  to  our  children,  and  to  maintain, 
let  us  hope,  the  republic  in  all  its  majesty 
and  glory  for  ever  and  ever. 


THE   PROFESSION   OF 
JOURNALISM. 

A  Lechire  delivered  to  the  Students  of  Union 
College,  Friday,  October  ij,  iSgj. 


If  there  is  anything-  in  life  that  is  de- 
lightful to  an  old  man,  it  is  the  opportu- 
nity of  meeting  intelligent  and  earnest 
young  men,  and  telling  them  something 
out  of  his  experience  that  may  be  useful 
to  them  ;  and,  as  our  desire  is  that  this 
shall  be  a  practical  occasion,  I  want  to 
say  at  the  beginning  that  if  any  part  of 
the  subject,  as  I  go  over  it,  shall  not  seem 
to  any  one  of  you  to  be  sufficiently  ex- 
plained and  elucidated,  I  will  be  very 
much  obliged  if  you  will  get  up  and  ask 
the  questions  that  you  wish  to  have  an- 
swered. 

25 


26    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING, 

The  profession  of  journalism  is  com- 
paratively new.  It  really  is,  as  it  exists 
to-day,  an  affair  of  the  last  forty  or  fifty 
years.  When  I  began  to  practice  it  in  a 
weekly  paper  the  apparatus  which  we 
have  now  was  quite  unknown.  The 
sheets  which  we  daily  take  in  our  hands 
and  from  which  we  gather  a  view  of  the 
whole  world  and  of  all  that  has  been 
going  on  in  it,  all  the  sciences,  all  the 
ideas,  all  the  achievements,  all  the  new 
lights  that  influence  the  destiny  of  man- 
kind— all  that  was  entirely  out  of  the 
question.  There  was  no  such  apparatus, 
and  it  has  been  created  by  the  necessities 
of  the  public  and  by  the  genius  of  a  few 
men  who  have  invented,  step  by  step,  the 
machinery  and  the  methods  that  are  indis- 
pensable, and  without  which  we  could 
not  undertake  to  do  what  we  do. 

Of  course  the  most  essential  part  of 
this  great  mechanism  is  not  the  mechan- 
ism itself ;  it  is  the  intelligence,  the 
brains,  and  the  sense  of  truth  and  honor 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    27 

that  reside  in  the  men  who  conduct  it 
and  make  it  a  vehicle  of  usefulness — or  it 
may  be  of  mischief :  because  what  is  use- 
ful can  just  as  easily  be  turned  to  mis- 
chief if  the  engineer  who  stands  behind 
and  lets  on  the  steam  is  of  an  erroneous 
disposition. 

The  number  of  intellectual  young 
men  who  are  looking  at  this  new  profes- 
sion, which  for  the  want  of  a  better  name 
we  call  the  profession  of  journalism,  is 
very  great.  I  suppose  that  I  receive 
myself  every  day,  taking  one  day  with 
another,  half  a  dozen  letters  from  men, 
many  of  them  college  graduates,  asking 
for  employment,  and  for  an  opportunity 
of  showing  what  is  in  them.  Of  course 
they  can  not  all  get  it  in  the  same  paper. 
Now  and  then  one  obtains  a  place,  but 
generally  the  rule  that  is  observed  in  all 
well-organized  newspaper  offices  is  that 
the  boys  who  began  at  the  beginning  are 
taken  up  step  by  step  in  accordance  with 
their  faculties  and  their  merits.     This  is 


28    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

SO  because,  as  we  know  in  college,  it  is 
impossible  that  there  should  be  any  im- 
posture which  sets  a  man's  abilities  above 
their  real  value,  since  in  the  daily  inter- 
course and  the  daily  competition  of  study 
and  of  recitation  the  real  worth  of  a 
man's  brain  is  demonstrated,  so  that 
there  is  never  any  doubt.  So  it  is  in  a 
newspaper  office.  The  boys  who  begin 
at  the  bottom  come  out  at  the  top.  At 
the  same  time  these  boys  do  not  all  start 
out  with  the  best  outfit,  that  is  to  say, 
with  the  best  education ;  and  I  have 
known  very  distinguished  authorities 
who  doubted  whether  high  education 
was  of  any  great  use  to  a  journalist. 
Horace  Greeley  told  me  several  times 
that  the  real  newspaper  man  was  the  boy 
who  had  slept  on  newspapers  and  ate  ink. 
Although  I  served  him  for  years  and  we 
were  very  near  in  our  personal  relations, 
I  think  he  always  had  a  little  grudge 
against  me  because  I  came  up  through  a 
college. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.   29 

Now,  here  before  us  are  a  number 
of  young  gentlemen  who,  I  have  no 
doubt,  will  be  led  to  embrace  this  profes- 
sion. We  know  that  among  a  certain 
number  of  students  there  are  so  many 
doctors,  so  many  clergymen,  so  many 
lawyers — sometimes  too  many  lawyers  ; 
and  there  are  also,  of  course,  a  consider- 
able number  who  are  looking  forward  to 
this  great  civilizing  engine  of  the  press  ; 
and  it  is  a  great  engine. 

Just  consider  the  clergyman.  He 
preaches  two  or  three  times  in  a  week 
and  he  has  for  his  congregation  two  hun- 
dred, three  hundred,  five  hundred,  and  if 
he  is  a  great  popular  orator  in  a  great 
city,  he  may  have  a  thousand  hearers  ; 
but  the  newspaper  man  is  the  stronger  be- 
cause throughout  all  the  avenues  of  news- 
paper communication,  how  many  does 
he  preach  to  ?  A  million,  half  a  million, 
two  hundred  thousand  people ;  and  his 
preaching  is  not  on  Sundays  only  but  it 
is  every  day.     He  reiterates,  he  says  it 


30 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


over  and  over,  and  finally  the  thing 
gets  fixed  in  men's  minds  from  the  mere 
habit  of  saying  it  and  hearing  it ;  and, 
without  criticising,  without  inquiring 
whether  it  is  really  so,  the  newspaper 
dictum  gets  established  and  is  taken 
for  gospel ;  and  perhaps  it  is  not  gospel 
at  all. 

In  regard  to  this  profession  there  are 
two  stages,  and  we  will  consider  each  of 
them  separately.  The  first  is  the  stage 
of  preparation.  What  sort  of  prepara- 
tion, what  sort  of  preliminary  education 
should  a  man  have  who  means  to  devote 
himself  to  this  business?  There  are 
some  colleges  which  have  lately  intro- 
duced schools  of  journalism  or  depart- 
ments of  journalism,  where  they  propose 
to  teach  the  art  of  newspaper  making,  to 
instruct  the  student  in  the  methods  that 
he  should  employ,  and  to  fit  him  out  so 
that  he  can  go  to  a  newspaper  office  and 
make  a  newspaper. 

Well,  I  will  not  say  that  is  not  useful. 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    31 

I  do  not  know  that  there  is  in  any  intel- 
lectual study,  or  in  any  intellectual  pur- 
suit, or  in  any  intellectual  occupation  that 
is  followed  with  zeal  and  attention,  any- 
thing- that  can  be  described  as  useless. 
No.  I  do  not  know  of  anything,  if  you 
really  learn  it,  although  it  may  seem  to 
your  next  neighbor  around  the  corner 
rather  trivial,  that  is  not  useful  after  all. 
There  is  certainly  a  great  utility  and  a 
profound  science  in  baseball,  and  the 
man  who  pursues  it  and  acquires  it,  has 
acquired  something  that  will  be  useful  to 
him.  He  has  got  a  knowledge,  he  has 
got  an  intellectual  discipline  that  will  be 
valuable  all  his  life  through.  So  it  is 
with  every  study  that  a  man  may  pursue, 
so  that  we  can  not  say  that  anything  is 
useless.  But  as  for  these  alleged  depart- 
ments of  journalism  in  the  colleges  I 
have  not  found  that  a  student  or  gradu- 
ate who  had  pursued  that  special  course 
instead  of  pursuing  other  studies,  was  of 
any  great  avail  as  a  practical  worker  in 


32 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


the  newspaper  work  that   he   had  been 
trying  to  learn. 

In  fact,  it  seems  to  me,  if  I  may  be 
allowed  a  little  criticism,  that  the  colleges 
generally  are  rather  branching  out  too 
much,  until  they  are  inclined  to  take  the 
whole  universe  into  their  curriculum,  and 
to  teach  things  which  do  not  exactly  be- 
long there.  Give  the  young  man  a  first- 
class  course  of  general  education ;  and 
if  I  could  have  my  way,  every  young 
man  who  is  going  to  be  a  newspaper 
man,  and  who  is  not  absolutely  rebellious 
against  it,  should  learn  Greek  and  Latin 
after  the  good  old  fashion.  I  had  rather 
take  a  young  fellow  who  knows  the  Ajax 
of  Sophocles,  and  who  has  read  Tacitus, 
and  can  scan  every  ode  of  Horace — I 
would  rather  take  him  to  report  a  prize 
fight  or  a  spelling  match,  for  instance, 
than  to  take  one  who  has  never  had 
those  advantages.  I  believe  in  the 
colleges  ;  I  believe  in  high  education ; 
but  I  do  not  believe  in  scattering  your 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.   33 

fire  before  you  are  in  the  face  of  the 
enemy. 

When  you  begin  to  practice  the  pro- 
fession of  a  newspaper  man,  then  is  the 
best  time  to  begin  to  learn  it ;  but  while 
you  are  in  college  with  the  daily  series 
of  professors  and  all  the  appliances  of 
study  that  belong  to  the  college,  make 
the  best  of  them,  and  pursue  vigorously 
those  studies  that  give  accuracy  in  learn- 
ing, and  that  give  fidelity  and  accuracy 
in  recitation.  The  great  end  of  educa- 
tion, President  Walker  used  to  say,  is  to 
be  able  to  tell  what  you  know  ;  and  he 
used  to  say,  too,  that  some  bright  men 
carried  it  so  far  that  they  were  able  to 
tell  a  great  deal  they  did  not  know. 

There  is  no  question  that  accuracy, 
the  faculty  of  seeing  a  thing  as  it  is,  of 
knowing,  for  instance,  that  it  is  two 
and  one  quarter  and  not  two  and  three 
eighths,  and  saying  so — that  is  one  of  the 
first  and  most  precious  ends  of  a  good 
education.     Next  to   that,   I   would   put 


34    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

the  ability  to  know  how  and  where  most 
promptly  to  look  for  what  you  don't 
know  and  what  you  want  to  know. 
Thirdly,  I  would  put  Dr.  Walker's  great 
object,  being  able  to  tell  what  you  know, 
and  to  tell  it  accurately,  precisely,  with- 
out exaggeration,  without  prejudice,  the 
fact  just  as  it  is,  whether  it  be  a  report  of 
a  baseball  game,  or  of  a  sermon,  or  of  a 
lecture  on  electricity,  whatever  it  may 
be,  to  get  the  thing  exactly  as  it  is.  The 
man  who  can  do  that  is  a  very  well-edu- 
cated man. 

In  addition  come  the  qualities  of  per- 
sonal talent  and  genius.  Now,  genius  is 
a  great  factor.  When  we  think  of  such  a 
genius  as  the  one  I  have  just  mentioned, 
the  late  Mr.  Greeley,  why,  our  minds 
may  well  be  filled  with  admiration.  I 
do  not  suppose  more  than  one  or  two 
gentlemen  here  ever  knew  Mr.  Greeley 
personally ;  but  he  was  a  man  of  im- 
mense ability,  of  instincts  of  extraordi- 
nary correctness  in  many  respects,  and 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    35 

of  the  power  of  expression,  of  telling 
what  he  knew  in  a  delightfully  pictur- 
esque, humorous  way,  which  not  merely 
instructed  the  hearer  and  reader,  but 
gave  him  a  sense  of  delight  and  satisfac- 
tion from  the  mere  art  that  was  applied 
in  the  telling.  He  had  had  no  great  ad- 
vantages of  education.  He  had  to  pick 
up  his  education  as  he  went  along,  read- 
ing in  the  winter  evenings  by  the  fire- 
light, and  never  wasting  a  chance  of 
learning  something.  But  he  lacked  one 
of  the  most  precious  faculties,  which  it 
is  another  great  object  of  the  college 
education  to  cultivate  and  bring  out,  and 
that  is  what  we  will  call  the  critical 
faculty,  the*  judgment  which,  when  a 
proposition  is  stated  to  you  or  a  fact  is 
reported,  looks  at  it  calmly  and  says, 
"  That  is  true,"  or  else,  "  That  is  false  "  ; 
the  judgment,  the  instinct,  the  developed 
and  cultivated  instinct  which  knows  the 
truth  when  it  is  presented  and  detects 
error  when  it  comes  masquerading   be- 


36    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

fore  you,  without  the  necessity  ot  any 
long  examination  to  ascertain  whether  it 
is  truth  or  error.  This  great  man  of 
whom  I  am  speaking,  this  great  and  bril- 
liant journalist,  one  of  the  greatest  we 
have  produced,  was  deficient  in  that 
faculty,  so  that  sometimes  he  was  mis- 
taken. We  are  all  of  us  mistaken  occa- 
sionally, I  dare  say,  but  perhaps  his  mis- 
takes were  more  conspicuous  because  of 
his  great  power  in  writing,  and  his  rare 
genius. 

Now,  as  for  the  preliminary  studies  of 
the  journalist  apart  from  the  ancient  lan- 
guages, whose  importance,  I  think,  can 
not  be  overestimated :  and  the  reason 
why  this  importance,  in  my  judgment,  is 
so  great  is  that  they  lie  at  the  founda- 
tion of  our  own  language,  and  the  man 
who  does  not  know  the  three  or  four  of 
those  old  languages,  or  at  least  two  of 
them — if  he  knows  three,  if  he  knows  the 
old  Teutonic  all  the  better — the  man 
who  has  not  that  knowledge   does   not 


THE   PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    37 

really  know  the  English  language,  and 
does  not  command  its  wonderful  re- 
sources, all  the  subtleties  and  abilities  of 
expression  which  are  in  it.  Certainly, 
without  Greek  and  Latin  no  man  knows 
English  ;  and  without  Teutonic  no  man's 
knowledge  of  English  is  perfect. 

The  first  thing  for  the  man  who  is 
looking  forward  to  this  profession,  in 
which  the  use  of  the  English  language  is 
the  main  thing,  since  it  is  the  instrument 
that  he  must  apply  continually  for  the 
expression  of  ideas  and  for  the  dissemi- 
nation of  knowledge,  is  to  know  this 
language  thoroughly,  and  that  is  the 
very  cornerstone  of  the  education  that  a 
journalist  should  look  forward  to  and 
should  labor  after,  and  should  neglect  no 
opportunity  of  improving  himself  in. 

After  a  knowledge  of  the  English  lan- 
guage comes,  of  course,  in  regular  order, 
the  practice,  the  cultivation  of  the  ability 
to  use  it,  the  development  of  that  art 
which  in  its  latest  form  we  call  style,  and 


38    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

which  distinguishes  one  writer  from  an- 
other. This  style  is  something  of  such 
an  evanescent,  intangible  nature  that  it 
is  difficult  to  tell  in  what  it  consists.  I 
suppose  it  is  in  the  combination  of  im- 
agination and  humor,  with  the  entire 
command  of  the  word-resources  of  the 
language,  all  applied  together  in  the  con- 
struction of  sentences.  I  suppose  that  is 
what  makes  style.  It  is  a  very  precious 
gift,  but  it  is  not  a  gift  that  can  always 
be  acquired  by  practice  or  by  study. 

It  may  be  added  that  certainly  in  its 
highest  perfection  it  can  never  be  ac- 
quired by  practice.  I  do  not  believe,  for 
instance,  that  everybody  who  should  en- 
deavor to  acquire  such  a  style  as  the  late 
Dr.  Channing  possessed,  could  succeed 
in  so  doing.  He  was  a  famous  writer 
fifty  years  ago  in  Boston,  and  his  style  is 
of  the  most  beautiful  and  remarkable 
character.  As  a  specimen  of  it,  let  me 
suggest  to  you  his  essay  on  Napoleon 
Bonaparte.     That  was  perhaps  the  very 


THE   PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    39 

best  of  the  critical  analysis  of  Napo- 
leon that  succeeded  the  period  of  Napo- 
leon worship,  which  had  run  all  over 
the  world.  Channing's  style  was  sweet, 
pure,  and  delightful,  without  having 
those  surprises,  those  extraordinary  fe- 
licities that  mark  the  styles  of  some 
writers.  It  was  perfectly  simple,  trans- 
lucent throughout,  without  effort,  never 
leaving  you  in  any  doubt  as  to  the  idea ; 
and  you  closed  the  book  with  the  feeling 
that  you  had  fallen  in  with  the  most 
sympathetic  of  minds,  whose  instructions 
you  might  sometimes  accept  or  some- 
times reject,  but  whom  you  could  not 
regard  without  entire  respect  and  ad- 
miration. 

Another  example  of  a  very  beautiful 
and  admirable  style  which  is  well  worth 
study  is  that  of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 
In  his  writings  we  are  charmed  with  the 
new  sense  and  meaning  that  he  seems  to 
give  to  familiar  words.  It  is  like  read- 
ing a  new  language  to  take  a  chapter  of 


40    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKIXG. 

Hawthorne  ;  yet  it  is  perfectly  lovely, 
because  with  all  its  suggestiveness  it 
is  perfectly  clear ;  and  when  you  have 
done  with  it  you  wish  you  could  do  it 
yourself. 

The  next  thing  that  I  would  dwell 
upon  would  be  the  knowledge  of  poli- 
tics, and  especially  of  American  politics. 
This  is  a  very  hard  subject.  Its  history 
is  difficult.  If  you  go  back  to  the  foun- 
dation of  the  republic,  you  find  it  was 
extremely  complicated  even  then  ;  and  it 
requires  very  careful  study  and  a  very 
elevated  impartiality  to  make  your  anal- 
ysis at  all  satisfactory  to  yourself  as  you 
go  through  the  work. 

Still,  it  is  indispensable  to  a  man  who 
means  to  fill  an  important  place  in  jour- 
nalism, and  all  who  begin  upon  it  cer- 
tainly have  that  intention.  No  young 
man  goes  into  any  profession  without  a 
good  degree  of  ambition  ;  no  young  man 
can  carry  his  ambition  very  far  in  jour- 
nalism— I    mean,    in    general,    universal 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.   41 

journalism,  not  in  special;  no  man  can 
carry  his  ambition  very  far  who  does  not 
know  politics,  and  in  order  to  know  poli- 
tics there  must  be  in  the  man  some  natu- 
ral disposition  for  politics.  I  have  often 
been  appealed  to  by  friends,  who  said  : 
"  Can't  you  take  this  young  man  and 
give  him  employment  ? "  Then  I  will 
watch  that  young  man  for  a  month  or  so 
and  see  what  it  is  that  he  takes  up  in  the 
morning.  If  he  takes  up  the  newspaper 
and  turns  to  the  political  part  of  the 
paper,  and  is  interested  in  that,  why  that 
is  a  good  symptom  of  his  intellectual 
tendencies ;  but  if,  instead  of  that,  he 
takes  up  a  magazine  and  sits  down  to 
read  a  love  story,  you  can  not  make  a 
newspaper  man  out  of  him. 

And  yet  he  may  make  a  very  good 
writer  of  love  stories  ;  and  as  that  is  a 
sort  of  merchandise  which  seems  to  be 
always  in  demand,  and  to  bring  pretty 
fair  prices,  why,  if  you  have  a  talent  in 
that  direction,  go  ahead.    You  may  make 


42 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


a.  good  living,  I  have  no  doubt ;  but  you 
w^ill  not  play  any  momentous  part  upon 
the  stage  of  public  affairs,  and  that  is  the 
sphere  of  activity  to  which  the  generous- 
hearted  and  courageous  youth  looks  for- 
ward. 

In  order  to  be  of  importance  in  the 
affairs  of  this  world  in  the  newspaper 
profession,  you  must  be  a  politician,  and 
you  must  know  not  merely  the  theories 
and  doctrines  of  parties,  not  merely  the 
recondite  part  of  politics,  but  you  must 
know  practical  politics,  the  history,  the 
men,  the  individuals,  their  ideas,  their 
purposes,  and  their  deeds  ;  know  them, 
if  you  can,  as  they  really  are,  not  as  the 
blind  and  the  prejudiced  may  imagine 
them  to  be. 

Now,  Mr.  Greeley  is  my  great  exem- 
plar in  journalism.  He  thought  a  news- 
paper man  was  of  little  use  who  did  not 
know  just  the  number  of  votes  in  every 
township  in  the  State  of  New  York,  and 
in  every  voting  precinct,  and  who  could 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    43 

not  tell  whether  the  returns  from  the 
Second  District  of  Pound  Ridge,  in 
Westchester  County,  were  correctly  re- 
ported or  not  without  sending  to  the 
place  to  find  out  how  many  votes  had 
really  been  cast.  That  was  one  of  his 
great  points  of  distinction  and  success ; 
but  I  would  not  advise  you  to  labor  after 
that  sort  of  knowledge  unless  you  have 
inherited  a  natural  talent  for  it.  But 
you  should  understand  and  appreciate 
the  theory  of  the  American  Government, 
you  should  know  where  this  republic 
began,  where  it  came  from,  and  where  it 
belongs  in  the  history  of  mankind,  and 
what  part  it  is  destined  to  play  in  the 
vast  drama  of  human  existence.  That  is 
the  sort  of  politics  that  must  appeal  to 
any  intelligent  man,  and  that  will  surely 
test  his  utmost  powers.  And  while  we 
are  on  this  point,  we  may  say  in  passing 
that  an  American  who  thinks  another 
country  is  better  than  this  should  not  go 
into  journalism.     You    must   be  for  the 


44 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


Stars  and  Stripes  every  time,  or  the  peo- 
ple of  this  country  won't  be  for  you,  and 
you  won't  sell  enough  papers  to  pay 
your  expenses. 

In  order  to  understand  the  theory  of 
the  American  Government,  the  most  se- 
rious, calm,  persistent  study  should  be 
given  to  the  Constitution  of  the  United 
States.  I  don't  mean  learning  it  by 
heart,  committing  it  to  memory.  What 
you  want  is  to  understand  it,  to  know  the 
principles  at  the  bottom  of  it ;  to  feel  the 
impulse  of  it ;  to  feel  the  heart-beat  that 
thrills  through  the  whole  American  peo- 
ple. That  is  the  vitality  that  is  worth 
knowing  ;  that  is  the  sort  of  politics  that 
excels  all  the  mysteries  of  ward  elections, 
and  lifts  you  up  into  a  view  where  you 
can  see  the  clear  skies,  the  unknown  ex- 
panse of  the  future.  Besides  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  United  States,  it  is  well  to 
be  acquainted  with  the  constitutions  of 
all  the  States.  All  these  constitutions 
are  more  or  less  modeled  upon  the  cen- 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    45 

tral  Constitution  :  but  there  are  differ- 
ences, and  those  differences  a  man  ought 
to  know.  The  citizen  of  New  York 
ought  to  understand  the  Constitution  of 
New  York,  and  for  himself  get  at  the 
reasons  for  this  and  that  provision.  Take, 
for  instance,  the  great  question  which 
has  occupied  the  people  of  New  York  so 
long,  the  question  of  an  elective  judi- 
ciary or  of  a  judiciary  appointed  by  the 
Governor :  which  is  better,  which  is 
right  ?  That  is  better  and  that  is  right, 
evidently,  which  gives  better  judges  and 
which  produces  a  more  equable,  steady, 
consistent,  and  just  administration  of 
law.  Well,  now,  the  young  man  who 
sets  to  work  and  studies  out  that  ques- 
tion has  accomplished  a  great  deal ;  he 
has  got  a  light  in  his  mind  that  will  go 
with  him  a  great  way,  and  that  will  help 
out  his  judgment  in  other  things.  Sup- 
posing that  he  is  conducting  a  news- 
paper, and  is  responsible  to  the  people 
for  conducting  it  in  an  instructiv-e  and 


46    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

useful  manner,  and  for  having  it  such 
that  when  he  says  a  thing  is  so  the  peo- 
ple will  know  that  it  is  so  ;  the  man  who 
knows  the  constitutions  of  the  States,  of 
his  own  State,  and  of  all  the  principal 
States,  as  well  as  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  is  well  fitted  for  conduct- 
ing a  newspaper,  or  even  for  administer- 
ing a  government. 

The  modern  newspaper,  however,  is 
not  confined  to  any  neighborhood  or  to 
any  country.  You  have  got  to  look  be- 
yond your  own  land  ;  you  have  got  to 
study  the  history  of  every  European 
country.  You  must  know,  first  of  all, 
the  history  of  England.  We  came  from 
England  ;  the  American  Constitution  is 
rooted  in  English  principles  and  in  Eng- 
lish history.  You  want  to  know  where 
it  started  from.  You  want  to  go  into  the 
garden  where  the  seed  was  first  sown 
and  watch  the  growth  of  this  great  prod- 
uct of  wisdom  and  beneficence  which 
we  call  the  American  Constitution.    You 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    47 

see,  the  course  of  preparatory  study  is 
pretty  large  ;  and  it  is  not  very  easy ;  it 
must  be  carried  on  in  earnest.  It  is  not 
a  matter  of  fancy  or  of  play.  And  so  not 
merely  with  the  history  of  England,  but 
with  the  history  of  all  of  Europe,  of 
every  great  and  every  little  country. 
The  course  of  human  history  offers  a  safe 
guide  for  human  action,  and  especially 
for  political  action.  The  history  of 
France  is  a  chapter  that  is  worthy  of  the 
utmost  attention  that  can  be  given  to  it. 
Why  have  such  and  such  results  been 
produced  ?  What  is  there  from  which 
this  and  that  effect  has  proceeded  ? 
These  are  the  sort  of  questions  that  care- 
ful study  can  bring  an  answer  to  ;  and 
without  careful  study  you  will  never  get 
the  answer. 

But  I  do  not  propose  all  these  things 
as  a  course  of  preparatory  study  for  a 
young  man.  You  can  not  learn  every- 
thing in  a  day.  It  is  as  much  as  many 
men  can  do  to  learn  a  few  things  in  the 


48    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

lapse  of  a  long  life ;  but  at  least  try  to 
learn  something  solid,  to  add  to  your 
stock  of  efficacious  knowledge,  to  add  to 
your  understanding  of  principles,  and  to 
feel  that  as  little  effort  as  possible  has 
been  wasted  and  as  little  time  as  possible 
flung  away. 

The  next  point  to  be  attended  to  is 
this :  What  books  ought  you  to  read  ? 
There  are  some  books  that  are  indispen- 
sable— a  few  books.  Almost  all  books 
have  their  use,  even  the  silly  ones,  and 
an  omnivorous  reader,  if  he  reads  intelli- 
gently, need  never  feel  that  his  time  is 
wasted  even  when  he  bestows  it  on  the 
flimsiest  trash  that  is  printed  ;  but  there 
are  some  books  that  are  absolutely  indis- 
pensable to  the  kind  of  education  that  we 
are  contemplating,  and  to  the  profession 
that  we  are  considering  ;  and  of  all  these 
the  most  indispensable,  the  most  useful, 
the  one  whose  knowledge  is  most  effect- 
ive, is  the  Bible.  There  is  no  book 
from  which  more  valuable  lessons  can  be 


THE  PROFEFSION  OF  JOURNALISM.    49 

learned.  I  am  considering  it  now  not  as 
a  religious  book,  but  as  a  manual  of 
utility,  of  professional  preparation,  and 
professional  use  for  a  journalist.  There 
is  perhaps  no  book  whose  style  is  more 
suggestive  and  more  instructive,  from 
which  you  learn  more  directly  that  sub- 
lime simplicity  which  never  exaggerates, 
which  recounts  the  greatest  event  with 
solemnity,  of  course,  but  without  senti- 
mentality or  affectation,  none  which  you 
open  with  such  confidence  and  lay  down 
with  such  reverence.  There  is  no  book 
like  the  Bible.  When  you  get  into  a 
controversy  and  want  exactly  the  right 
answer,  when  you  are  looking  for  an  ex- 
pression, what  is  there  that  closes  a  dis- 
pute like  a  verse  from  the  Bible  ?  What 
is  it  that  sets  up  the  right  principle  for 
you,  which  pleads  for  a  policy,  for  a 
cause,  so  much  as  the  right  passage  of 
Holy  Scripture  ? 

Then,    everybody    who    is    going    to 
practice  the  newspaper  profession  ought 


50    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

to  know  Shakespeare.  He  is  the  chief 
master  of  English  speech.  He  is  the 
head  of  English  literature.  Considered 
as  a  writer,  considered  as  a  poet,  con- 
sidered as  a  philosopher,  I  do  not  know 
another  who  can  be  named  with  him. 
He  is  not  merely  a  constructor  of  plays 
that  are  powerful  and  impressive  when 
they  are  shown  upon  the  stage,  with  all 
the  auxiliaries  of  lights,  and  scenery,  and 
characters  ;  he  is  a  high  literary  treasure, 
a  mighty  storehouse  of  wisdom,  the  great 
glory  of  the  literature  of  our  language  ; 
and,  if  you  don't  know  him,  knowing  the 
language  may  not  be  of  much  avail  after 
all.  Perhaps  that  is  an  exaggeration, 
and  I  take  it  back ;  but  it  is  an  object  to 
know  Shakespeare ;  it  is  indispensable  to 
a  journalist. 

Then  there  is  another  English  author 
who  ought  not  to  be  neglected  by  any 
young  man  who  means  to  succeed  in  this 
profession.  I  mean  John  Milton,  and  I 
invite  your   attention   to   that   immortal 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     51 

essay  of  his,  too  little  known  in  our  day, 
the  Speech  for  the  Liberty  of  Unlicensed 
Printing-.  It  is  a  treasury  of  the  highest 
wisdom,  of  the  noblest  sentiments,  and  of 
the  greatest  instruction  ;  study  that,  and 
you  will  get  at  once  the  philosophy  of 
English  liberty  and  the  highest  doctrine 
that  has  ever  been  promulgated,  to  my 
knowledge,  with  regard  to  the  freedom 
of  the  press. 

When  I  advise  you  to  make  yourselves 
familiar  with  these  glories  of  English 
literature,  I  do  not  say  that  these  writers 
ought  to  be  taken  as  models.  Do  not 
take  any  model.  Every  man  has  his  own 
natural  style,  and  the  thing  to  do  is  to 
develop  it  into  simplicity  and  clearness. 
Do  not,  for  instance,  labor  after  such  a 
style  as  Matthew  Arnold's — one  of  the 
most  beautiful  styles  that  has  ever  been 
seen  in  any  literature.  It  is  no  use  to 
try  to  get  another  man's  style,  or  to 
imitate  the  wit  or  the  mannerisms  of  an- 
other writer.     The  late  ]Mr.  Carlyle,  for 


52    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER   MAKING. 

example,  did,  in  my  judgment,  a  consid- 
erable mischief  in  his  day  because  he  led 
everybody  to  write  after  the  style  of  his 
French  Revolution,  and  it  became  pretty 
tedious.  They  got  over  it  after  a  time, 
however.  But  it  was  not  a  good  thing. 
Let  every  man  write  in  his  own  style, 
taking  care  only  not  to  be  led  into  any 
affectation,  but  to  be  perfectly  clear, 
perfectly  simple,  or,  in  other  words,  to 
follow  the  honored  and  noble  traditions 
of  Union  College. 

That  is  all  that  it  seems  to  me  nec- 
essary to  say  with  regard  to  the  studies 
and  the  education  of  the  journalist. 
Now,  let  us  turn  to  the  practice  of  this 
profession.  One  of  the  parts  of  the  news- 
paper profession  which  employs  the 
greatest  number  of  men,  and  I  may  also 
say  the  greatest  amount  of  talent,  is  the 
business  of  reporting.  In  a  large  news- 
paper office,  as  in  the  Tribune  in  New 
York,  for  example,  where  there  may  be 
one   hundred  men  who   are  attached   to 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     53 

the  paper  as  writers,  as  correspondents, 
as    reporters,  and    to    the  strictly  edito- 
rial department,  out  of  this  one  hundred, 
sixty  or  seventy  will  be  reporters — that 
is,  men  who  are  sent  out  when  any  event 
of  interest  occurs,  when  a  bank  breaks, 
when  a  great  fire  takes  place,  when  there 
is  an  earthquake,  to  inquire  into  the  facts 
and  collect  information,  and  to  put  that 
information  into  form   so  that  it  can  be 
printed    the   next    day.      That  is  one  of 
the  most  important  branches  of  the  pro- 
fession, and    it  is    paid  very  liberally,  I 
am  glad  to  say.     For    instance,  I  know 
many  reporters  who   earn  ten  or  fifteen 
dollars  a  day  and  some  who  earn  more. 
They    have   constant    employment,    and 
their  labor  is  entirely  agreeable  to  them- 
selves.     That  is  one  of  the   first  things, 
when  a  young  man  comes  for  employment 
and  you  take    him    on  and    give    him  a 
chance,  that  he  is  set  to  do.     There,  you 
see,  all  this  culture   that  we  have   been 
considering  is  at    once  brought  into  ac- 


54 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


tion.  He  must  learn  accurately  the  facts, 
and  he  must  state  them  exactly  as  they 
are ;  and  if  he  can  state  them  with  a  little 
degree  of  life,  a  little  approach  to  elo- 
quence, or  a  little  humor  in  his  style, 
why,  his  report  will  be  perfect.  It  must 
be  accurate ;  it  must  be  free  from  affec- 
tation ;  it  must  be  well  set  forth,  so  that 
there  shall  not  be  any  doubt  as  to  any 
part  or  detail  of  it ;  and  then  if  it  is  en- 
livened with  imagination,  or  with  feel- 
ing, or  with  humor,  why,  you  have  got 
a  literary  product  that  no  one  need  be 
ashamed  of.  Thus  we  see  this  depart- 
ment of  the  newspaper  is  really  a  high 
art,  and  it  may  be  carried  to  an  extraor- 
dinary degree  of  perfection.  At  the 
same  time,  the  cultivated  man  is  not  in 
every  case  the  best  reporter.  One  of  the 
best  I  ever  knew  was  a  man  who  could 
not  spell  four  words  correctly  to  save 
his  life,  and  his  verb  did  not  always 
agree  with  the  subject  in  person  and 
number  ;    but  he  always  got  the  fact  so 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     55 

exactly,  and  he  saw  the  picturesque,  the 
interesting,  and  important  aspect  of  it  so 
vividly,  that  it  was  worth  another  man's 
while,  who  possessed  the  knowledge  of 
grammar  and  spelling,  to  go  over  the  re- 
port and  write  it  out.  Now,  that  was  a 
man  who  had  genius  ;  he  had  a  talent 
the  most  indubitable,  and  he  got  hand- 
somely paid  in  spite  of  his  lack  of  gram- 
mar, because  after  his  work  had  been 
done  over  by  a  scholar  it  was  really 
beautiful.  But  any  man  who  is  sincere 
and  earnest,  and  not  always  thinking 
about  himself,  can  learn  to  be  a  good  re- 
porter. He  can  learn  to  ascertain  the 
truth  ;  he  can  acquire  the  habit  of  see- 
ing. When  he  looks  at  a  fire,  what  is 
the  most  important  thing  about  that  fire? 
Here,  let  us  say,  are  five  houses  burning ; 
which  is  the  greatest  ?  whose  store  is 
that  which  is  burning?  and  who  has  met 
with  the  greatest  loss  ?  Has  any  individ- 
ual perished  in  the  conflagration  ?  Are 
there  any  very  interesting  circumstances 


56    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER   MAKING, 

about  the  fire  ?  How  did  it  occur?  Was 
it  like  Chicago,  where  a  cow  kicked  over 
a  spirit  lamp  and  burned  up  the  city  ?  All 
these  things  the  reporter  has  to  judge 
about.  He  is  the  eye  of  the  paper,  and 
he  is  there  to  see  which  is  the  vital  fact 
in  the  story,  and  to  produce  it,  tell  it, 
write  it  out. 

Next  to  the  reporter,  a  very  impor- 
tant functionary  in  the  newspaper  is  the 
man  who  reads  the  other  newspapers  and 
makes  extracts  from  them.  Mr.  Greeley 
used  to  think  that  it  was  enough  to  make 
a  good  paper  if  he  had  an  able  man  to 
read  the  exchanges,  provided  he  himself 
was  there  to  add  up  the  returns  of  the 
elections.  The  man  who  reads  the  ex- 
changes is  a  very  important  man ;  and, 
let  me  say,  too,  he  is  a  pretty  highly  paid 
man.  He  has  to  read,  we  will  say,  three 
thousand  papers  regularly.  All  the 
newspapers  in  the  country  come  into  the 
office,  and  he  does  not  do  anything  else. 
He  sits  at  his  desk  all  day,  and  a  pile  of 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     57 

newspapers,  or  say  a  cord  of  newspapers, 
is  laid  before  him  every  morning ;  he 
starts  to  work  and  turns  them  over  and 
over  to  see  what  is  in  them.  He  has  to 
know  what  it  is  that  should  be  taken 
from  them  and  put  into  his  paper.  What 
is  the  interesting  story?  It  requires 
judgment  to  know  this ;  it  requires 
knowledge  and  experience  as  well  as  tal- 
ent. It  also  requires  a  sense  of  humor, 
because  there  are  a  great  many  things 
that  are  really  important  that  may  not 
seem  so  at  the  first  glance,  and  the  news- 
paper reader  has  got  to  judge  about  that. 
He  must  always  be  on  hand  and  spend  a 
great  many  hours  at  his  desk ;  and  he  is 
pretty  tired  when  he  gets  through  with 
his  day's  task.  It  is  a  hard  duty,  but  he 
has  lots  of  amusement,  and,  as  I  said,  he 
is  very  well  paid.     So  he  is  happy. 

Next  to  the  exchange  reader  in  the 
newspaper  organization  comes  the  man 
whose  duty  it  is  to  receive  manuscripts 
and  examine  them  and  prepare  them  for 


58 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


the  press,  to  edit  them,  correct  them ; 
where  the  writer  has  made  a  little  slip  of 
rhetoric,  to  put  the  right  word  in  or  the 
right  turn  of  the  phrase  ;  to  clarify  it  all ; 
to  make  the  sentences  clean.  That  is  a 
hard  job  in  the  writing  of  a  great  many 
persons.  They  interject ;  they  put  sub- 
sentences  in  parentheses.  They  do  not 
begin  and  say  the  thing  in  its  exact  order, 
taking  first  the  man  and  then  what  he 
did,  and  where  he  went;  but  they  mix  it 
up  and  complicate  it.  The  editor  who 
examines  the  manuscripts  has  got  to  go 
through  all  these  things  and  straighten 
them  out  and  disentangle  the  facts  that 
the  writer  has  twisted  up  ;  and  then  he 
must  correct  the  punctuation,  mark  the 
paragraphs  where  one  idea  is  finished 
and  a  new  idea  begins.  He  also  receives 
the  correspondence.  Letters  from  all 
over  the  world  go  into  his  hands.  You 
will  get  a  letter  from  Madagascar,  per- 
haps. Ought  it  to  be  published  ?  There 
is  a  lot  of  news  in  it,  perhaps,  that  is  of 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     59 

no  interest  in  New  York  or  in  Schenec- 
tady. He  has  got  to  determine  whether 
it  is  worth  while  to  put  that  in  or  to 
leave  it  out,  although  you  may  have  to 
pay  for  it  and  not  use  it.  Masses  of  mat- 
ter are  paid  for  in  a  large  newspaper 
office  that  are  never  used.  So,  you  see, 
he  is  a  very  important  functionary,  and 
it  requires  a  great  deal  of  knowledge,  a 
great  deal  of  judgment,  a  great  deal  of 
literary  cultivation  to  be  able  to  fill  that 
position. 

Then  finally  you  come  to  the  editor- 
in-chief,  and  he  is  always  a  man  who  gets 
into  his  place  by  a  natural  process  of  se- 
lection. He  comes  there  because  he  can 
do  the  work,  and  T  have  known  some 
young  men  who  had  no  idea  that  they 
would  ever  have  control  of  a  newspaper 
who  have  risen  to  that  place,  and  who 
have  filled  it  with  wisdom  and  success 
and  force.  Yet  at  the  bottom  of  it  all,  it 
is  always  a  question  of  character,  as  well 
as  of  talent.     A  fellow  that  is  practicing 


6o    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

arts  of  deception  may  last  a  little  while, 
but  he  can  not  last  long.  The  man  who 
stays  is  the  man  who  has  the  staying 
power;  and  the  staying  power  is  not 
merely  intellectual,  it  is  moral.  It  is  in 
the  character,  and  people  believe  in  him, 
because  they  are  sure  he  does  not  mean 
to  say  anything  that  is  not  so. 

Now,  every  one  who  has  written  or 
talked  about  newspapers,  has  made  a 
great  account  of  the  matter  of  news, 
and  in  these  remarks  that  it  has  been  my 
opportunity  to  make  I  have  not  said  any- 
thing yet  on  that  subject.  News  is  un- 
doubtedly a  great  thing  in  a  newspaper. 
A  newspaper  without  news  is  no  news- 
paper. The  main  function  of  a  newspa- 
per is  to  give  the  news,  and  tell  you  what 
has  happened  in  the  world,  what  events 
have  occurred  of  all  sorts,  poHtical,  scien- 
tific, and  nonsensical.  By  the  way,  one 
person  that  I  have  not  mentioned  is  the 
scientific  man.  That  is  also  a  place  that 
has  to  be  filled  by  special  cultivation.     A 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     6 1 

scientific  man,  one  who  knows  electricity 
and  chemistry  ;  one  who  can  really  un- 
derstand the  inventions  of  Edison,  and 
who  can  tell  what  is  going  on  in  the  sci- 
entific world  where  so  many  men  of  gen- 
ius are  incessantly  at  work  bringing  out 
and  developing  new  things.  There  must 
be  a  man  of  that  sort  on  a  newspaper. 
That  is  a  department  of  news  of  supreme 
consequence. 

But  the  business  of  collecting  news, 
which  has  always  been  regarded  as  of 
prime  importance,  is  rather  declining 
into  a  second  place.  It  is  a  necessity,  and 
it  is  very  costly,  to  collect  and  to  bring 
here  to  Schenectady,  for  instance,  for 
printing  to-morrow  morning,  the  news 
of  the  whole  world,  from  England,  from 
Germany,  from  Russia,  from  France, 
from  Africa,  from  South  America,  from 
the  Pacific,  so  that  it  may  be  presented 
to  the  reader  who  takes  up  the  paper  to- 
morrow, and  he  may  have  a  panorama 
of  all  the  events  of  the  preceding  day. 


62    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

What  a  wonder,  what  a  marvel  it  is 
that  here  for  one  or  two  cents  you  buy 
a  history  of  the  entire  globe  of  the 
day  before !  It  is  something  that  is  mi- 
raculous, really,  when  you  consider  it. 
All  brought  here  to  Schenectady  and 
printed  !  All  brought  here  by  electric- 
ity, by  means  of  the  telegraph  !  So  that 
the  man  who  has  knowledge  enough  to 
read,  can  tell  what  was  done  in  France 
yesterda}^  or  in  Turkey,  or  in  Persia. 
That  is  a  wonderful  thing.  But  the  very 
necessity  of  bringing  all  this  matter  to- 
gether, and  the  immense  expense  attend- 
ant upon  it,  have  led  to  the  formation  of 
associations  among  newspapers,  and  to 
the  organization  of  agencies.  I  won't 
undertake  to  say  now  how  much  the  ex- 
pense is,  because  I  do  not  remember  it 
with  absolute  certainty,  but  it  is  an  enor- 
mous sum,  say  perhaps  three  to  five  thou- 
sand dollars  a  day  ;  but  when  it  is  divided 
among  the  four  or  five  or  six  thousand 
newspapers   in   the    United    States,   first 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     63 

divided  among  all  the  great  cities  and 
then  among  the  cities  of  the  second  class, 
which  pay  less,  and  so  on  until  finally  it  is 
distributed  all  around,  why,  it  costs  each 
individual  newspaper  very  little ;  and  the 
system  which  is  most  perfectly  organized 
is  the  establishment  known  as  the  United 
Press.  It  supplies  the  news  of  the  whole 
world,  so  that  the  individual  editor  sit- 
ting at  his  desk  has  only  to  look  after  the 
news  of  his  own  locality.  When  he  has 
got  that,  he  gets  from  the  United  Press 
the  news  of  all  the  rest  of  the  world,  and, 
putting  them  together,  his  report  of  the 
day's  history  of  the  globe  is  complete. 
That  is  an  institution  which  has  revolu- 
tionized and  is  revolutionizing  the  opera- 
tions of  the  profession,  so  that  instead  of 
the  struggle  to  hunt  after  the  news,  to 
appreciate  the  importance  of  events  that 
people  generally  do  not  see,  and  to  re- 
port them  so  that  you  may  have  in  your 
journal  something  that  the  others  have 
not   got,    that   struggle   is    mainly    obvi- 


64    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

ated  by  this  organization  of  the  United 
Press.  The  news  of  the  entire  world  is 
brought  to  you,  and  the  editor,  the  news- 
paper, is  put  back  into  the  position  which 
the  thinker  occupied  before  this  supreme 
attention  to  news  was  regarded  as  indis- 
pensable. The  editors  and  writers  of  the 
newspapers  are  now  emancipated  from 
all  that  drudgery,  and  have  become  in- 
tellectual beings  again.  The  work  of 
news-getting  is  performed  by  this  great 
and  wide-reaching  agency  of  the  United 
Press,  and  the  individual  editor  here 
in  Schenectady,  or  in  Chicago,  or  New 
Orleans  has  no  anxiety  on  that  subject 
any  longer.  He  devotes  himself  to  the 
intellectual  part  of  his  business,  and  is 
able  to  carry  that  on  with  a  nearer  ap- 
proach to  perfection  than  he  has  ever 
been  able  to  attain  before.  That,  I  think, 
is  a  revolution  that  is  going  to  make  a 
great  change  in  the  profession  of  news- 
paper making,  raising  it  to  a  higher  dig- 
nity than  it  has  ever  occupied.      I  look 


THE  PROFESSION  OF  JOURNALISM.     65 

forward  to  the  effects  of  this  revolution 
with  the  greatest  hope  and  confidence, 
and  I  think  you  young  gentlemen  who 
have  not  yet  embarked  in  the  profession 
may  be  congratulated  on  being  able  to 
come  into  it  under  such  auspicious  cir- 
cumstances. 

Gentlemen,  I  am  greatly  indebted  to 
you  for  your  kind  attention,  and  I  bid 
you  farewell ! 


THE   MAKING  OF 
A   NEWSPAPER   MAN. 

A  Lecture  delivered  at  Cornell  University , 
on  Founders  Day,  January  ii,  iSg^. 


Every  age  and  every  stage  of  social 
evolution  requires  and  produces  new 
exemplars  and  new  leaders,  men  better 
suited  than  others  to  the  work  that  age 
has  to  do,  to  the  business  it  has  in  hand 
in  the  vast  drama  of  man's  existence 
upon  earth.  Two  men,  two  kinds  of 
men,  seem  to  me  especially  the  guides, 
the  leaders,  the  servants,  the  benefactors 
of  the  present  day  ;  and  the  first  of  these 
is  the  man  of  thought,  of  science,  the 
man  who  grasps  the  secrets  of  Nature, 
and   who  brings  out  new   methods   and 

66 


MAKIXG  OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    ()j 

new  appliances  by  which  they  are  con- 
verted into  agents  of  human  use.  Con- 
sider, for  instance,  what  such  a  man  as 
Edison  does  for  the  world,  or  a  man  like 
Tesla,  who  is  bending-  all  the  faculties  of 
original  genius  to  give  us  new  means 
and  new  powers,  so  that  the  abilities  and 
the  resources  of  humanity  are  doubled 
or  quintupled,  and  men  become  able  to 
live  better  upon  this  planet,  and  to  leave 
behind  them  the  faculty  of  still  better 
living  for  those  who  are  to  follow  after. 

That  is  one  class  of  men  that  1  refer 
to,  the  thinkers,  the  men  of  science,  the 
inventors  ;  and  the  other  class  is  that  of 
those  whom  God  has  endowed  with  a 
genius  for  saving,  for  getting  rich,  for 
bringing  wealth  together,  for  accumu- 
lating and  concentrating  money,  men 
against  whom  it  is  now  fashionable  to 
declaim,  and  against  whom  legislation  is 
sometimes  directed.  And  yet  is  there 
any  benefactor  of  humanity  who  is  to  be 
envied  in  his   achievements    and   in  the 


68    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER   MAKING. 

memory  and  the  monuments  he  has  left 
behind  him,  more  than  Ezra  Cornell  ? 
Or,  to  take  another  example  that  is  here 
before  our  eyes,  more  than  Henry  W. 
Sage  ?  These  are  men  who  knew  how 
to  get  rich,  because  they  had  been  en- 
dowed with  that  faculty,  and  when  they 
had  got  wealth,  they  knew  how  to  give  it 
for  great  public  enterprises,  for  uses  that 
will  remain  living,  immortal  as  long  as 
man  remains  upon  the  earth.  The  men 
of  genius  and  the  men  of  money,  those 
who  prepare  new  agencies  of  life,  and 
those  who  accumulate  and  save  the 
money  for  great  enterprises  and  great 
public  works,  these  are  the  peculiar  and 
the  inestimable  leaders  of  the  world,  as 
the  twentieth  century  is  opening  upon  us. 
It  is  expected  that  I  shall  say  some- 
thing here  to-day  about  the  newspaper 
and  the  art  of  making  it.  The  news- 
paper is  an  article  of  primary  necessity. 
You  must  have  your  breakfast,  but  you 
must  have  your  newspaper  too.     With- 


MAKING  OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    69 

out  it  we  don't  know  what  has  happened 
in  the  world,  we  don't  know  what  new 
ideas,  we  don't  know  what  shocking 
events,  we  don't  know  what  well-founded 
or  what  fantastical  hopes  are  looming 
before  the  minds  of  the  masses  of  men. 
We  don't  even  know  who  is  married. 
Now,  in  these  remarks  that  I  shall  at- 
tempt to  make,  there  will  be  necessarily 
a  great  many  details  and  a  great  many 
small  circumstances ;  and  I  shall  be  in- 
debted to  any  one  who  does  not  see 
exactly  the  fact  that  I  am  stating,  or  who 
wants  some  further  explanation  of  it,  if 
he  will  interrupt  me  and  get  up  and  put 
his  question.  The  result  may  not  be  ex- 
actly a  lecture,  but  a  kind  of  academic 
conversation  that  may  be  more  lively 
and  more  useful  than  a  formal  discourse. 
The  newspaper  profession  is  certainly 
a  learned  profession  in  one  sense.  It  is  a 
profession  in  which  the  utmost  amount 
of  learning  can  be  put  to  use.  But  at 
the  same  time   I   am   sorry  to    say  that 


70    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

there  are  newspapers  in  which  learning 
is  very  sparingly  applied,  and  more  facts 
and  better  logic  would  be  an  improve- 
ment. But  a  newspaper  is  very  much 
like  human  nature  ;  it  is  right  sometimes, 
and  it  is  wrong  pretty  often.  But,  on 
the  whole,  there  is  no  question  that  the 
newspaper  is  not  only  a  needful  institu- 
tion, but  that  it  is  a  useful,  advantageous, 
and  beneficial  institution. 

Just  now  the  business  of  making  news- 
papers is  going  through  a  revolution  ;  it 
is  passing  through  changes  of  a  very 
radical  and  remarkable  nature.  These 
changes  are  due,  first,  to  the  invention  of 
new  printing  machinery,  which  makes 
it  possible  to  publish  the  large  editions 
and  the  large  newspapers  that  we  see 
all  around  us.  Before  these  machines 
were  invented  it  was  not  possible  to  do 
this,  and  a  machine,  an  old-fashioned 
press  that  could  turn  out  six  hundred  or 
seven  hundred  copies  a  day  from  the 
hands  of  the  operator,  was  the  best  there 


MAKING  OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     71 

was  in  the  world.  Now  the  most  im- 
proved presses — and  I  say  frankly  that 
the  best  that  we  have  are  those  made  by 
Hoe  in  New  York — can  turn  out  at  one 
impression  large  sheets  of  eight,  ten,  or 
twelve  pages  and  deliver  twenty  thou- 
sand finished  papers  in  an  hour.  We 
hear  sometimes  figures  more  surprising, 
but  that  is  about  the  maximum  of  safe 
and  good  work.  One  peculiarity  of  these 
machines  is  that  the  papers  are  not  only 
printed,  and  printed  well,  but  they  are 
folded  by  the  machine ;  and,  what  is 
more,  they  are  counted  and  laid  out  in 
piles  of  a  certain  number,  so  that  when 
the  dealer  who  buys  them  comes  to  the 
office  to  get  his  papers,  he  does  not  need 
to  count  them  ;  they  are  all  counted  and 
ready  for  him  to  take  away.  When  I 
was  in  the  Tribune,  thirty  years  ago,  we 
had  to  employ  men  to  count  the  papers 
after  they  were  printed,  and  it  was  a 
very  important  duty.  If  they  made  a 
mistake  of  any  moment,  there  would  be 


72    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER   MAKING. 

trouble.  But  now  there  is  no  mistake 
possible.  The  papers  are  handsomely 
folded,  and  they  are  laid  down  and 
counted,  so  that  the  dealer  picks  out  his 
pile  and  goes  away  certain  that  he  has 
got  just  what  he  has  bought. 

Next  to  the  press  comes  the  type- 
setting machine.  We  who  have  reached 
a  certain  maturity  of  life  grew  up  in  the 
impression  that  a  machine  to  set  type 
was  something  impracticable.  In  fact, 
ever  since  I  was  a  boy  I  have  known 
men  trying  to  make  them,  and  not  will- 
ing- to  set  their  failures  down  as  real 
failure.  But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  not 
more  than  fifteen  years,  let  us  say,  since 
a  machine,  operated  with  keys  like  a 
piano,  was  actually  invented  that  could 
set  up  type  by  mechanical  means,  and 
furnish  matter  set  up  and  corrected,  and 
ready  to  be  put  upon  the  press.  There 
are  a  good  many  of  these  machines  of 
very  different  nature  and  operation.  The 
one  that  is  now  most  in  use  is  the  inven- 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     73 

tion  of  a  man  of  talent  named  Mergan- 
thaler.  By  that  machine  the  type  are  set 
up,  a  line  is  formed  and  corrected,  just 
one  line  at  a  time,  and  then  with  melted 
metal  a  cast  of  that  line  is  made,  so  that, 
instead  of  a  mass  of  type,  you  can  take  in 
your  hands  what  printers  call  a  slug- ; 
and  then  they  go  on  and  make  another 
until  the  whole  article  and  the  whole 
page  is  put  together,  ready  to  be  used  on 
the  presses.  Then  there  is  another  ma- 
chine which  a  certain  literary  gentleman 
named  Mark  Twain — I  presume  most  of 
you  have  heard  of  Mark  Twain — is  in- 
terested in.  He  has  spent  a  good  deal 
of  money  on  the  invention,  and  I  am 
glad  to  say  that  he  has  had  it  to  spend, 
all  created  from  the  brain  of  a  man  of 
genius.  It  is  a  machine  of  exceeding 
delicacy,  and  it  does  exactly  what  the 
human  fingers  do.  It  picks  up  the  type 
and  puts  it  in  the  box  and  secures  it 
there,  so  that  finally  the  column,  the 
article,  can  be  put  into  the  form  and  the 


74 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER   MAKING. 


impression  be  made.     It  seems  to  do  all 
that  a  man  can  do  by  mechanism. 

I  should  have  said  that  with  all  the 
modern  printing  machinery  no  types  are 
put  upon  the  press  to  be  printed.  A 
stereotype  plate,  usually  of  a  whole  page, 
is  made,  with  a  curve  in  its  shape  that 
will  fit  the  press,  and  from  that  the  print- 
ing is  done.  But  this  gentleman,  this 
friend  of  Mark  Twain,  sets  his  type  up 
one  by  one  by  his  machine,  and  the  type 
is  put  into  the  form,  and  the  stereotype 
plate  of  the  whole  page  is  made  from 
that.  Then  there  are  half  a  dozen  other 
inventions,  but  the  most  successful  one 
so  far,  the  one  that  is  in  use  in  a  great 
many  newspaper  offices,  is  that  of  Mer- 
ganthaler,  or,  as  it  is  commonly  called, 
the  Linotype  machine.  I  have  never 
taken  to  that  very  much,  because  it  didn't 
seem  to  me  to  turn  out  a  page  as  hand- 
some, in  a  typographical  point  of  view, 
as  a  page  set  up  by  hand.  The  differ- 
ence  in   expense   is  something   consider- 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     75 

able,  however.  I  have  been  told  by  one 
large  newspaper  publisher  who  employs 
that  machine  that  he  gets  his  typesetting 
done  for  one  half  the  cost  of  typesetting 
done  by  hand.  Mr.  Whitelaw  Reid,  of 
the  Tribune,  thought  that  he  had  it  for 
less  than  half. 

Of  course  the  eflfect  of  using  these 
mechanical  typesetters  is  to  cheapen  the 
newspaper  when  it  is  done  and  ready  for 
sale.  But  the  great  revolutionary  agent 
is  the  cheapness  we  have  reached  in  the 
cost  of  paper.  I  remember  very  well 
when  paper  was  made  of  rags,  and  pres- 
ently  it  became  evident  that  the  country 
and  all  countries  didn't  supply  rags 
enough.  The  manufacturers  couldn't 
get  the  rags,  and  so  we  were  liable  to 
be  left  without  paper.  Then  there  came 
alons:  a  Frenchman  who  invented  a 
chemical  method  of  making  paper  from 
rye  straw ;  and  I  remember  that  the 
value  of  rye  straw  here  in  the  interior  of 
New  York  rose  all  at  once  from   six  to 


1^ 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


twenty  dollars  a  ton  because  of  the  de- 
mand created  for  it  to  make  paper  with. 
That,  however,  was  not  the  end  of  the 
movement.  The  rye  straw  always  had, 
after  it  was  converted  into  paper,  a  sili- 
ceous surface,  a  flinty,  glassy  surface,  and 
that  wore  the  type  out,  so  that  a  set  of 
type  for  a  newspaper,  that  ought  to  last 
a  year,  wouldn't  last  more  than  three 
months.  But  then  came  the  great  change 
of  ail,  when  people  turned  from  the  rye 
field  and  its  straw  to  the  forests.  And 
now  all  printing  paper  that  is  used  in 
newspapers  is  made  out  of  wood  ;  and 
when  you  pick  up  your  paper  in  the 
morning  to  look  at  it,  the  probability  is 
that  you  are  picking  up  a  piece  of  spruce 
tree  from  Norway,  or  that  you  have  got 
hold  of  a  spruce  taken  out  of  the  Adi- 
rondack country,  or  wherever  in  North 
America  spruce  timber  can  be  found.  A 
few  years  ago  a  man  conceived  that  he 
had  invented  an  immense  thing  that  was 
sure  to  give  new  value  to  the  big  swamps 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     yy 

along  the  Mississippi.  From  Illinois 
down  to  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
there  are  immense  forests,  growing  al- 
most everywhere  on  each  side  of  the 
river,  chiefly  of  a  sort  of  poplar  known 
as  Cottonwood,  and  he  was  going  to  make 
paper  out  of  that.  He  did  the  thing,  but 
the  paper  was  too  good,  and  the  cost 
price  was  too  high,  and  I  do  not  imagine 
that  any  paper  of  that  very  fine  sort  is 
now  used.  What  we  all  employ  is  made, 
as  I  have  said,  out  of  spruce  trees,  or 
pine  trees,  or  almost  any  kind  of  soft 
wood.  They  put  it  through  a  mill  and 
grind  it  up  into  powder,  as  fine  as  flour, 
and  then  it  is  converted  into  pulp,  and 
from  that  the  paper  is  made ;  and  the 
manufacturers  of  paper  now  generally 
buy  their  material  in  the  form  of  pulp. 
You  know  there  is  a  justly  distinguished 
statesman  of  New  York,  who  instead  of 
being  called  by  his  first  name  has  been 
popularly  known   as   Wood    Pulp.      He 

has    contributed    much    toward    making 
n 


78    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

newspapers  and  toward  diffusing  views 
which  do  not  always  agree  with  his  own. 
Yet  he  is  all  right.  We  owe  him  grati- 
tude, and  I  desire  to  pay  in  all  sincerity 
my  share  of  this  general  tribute. 

You  will  perhaps  be  able  to  appreci- 
ate the  importance  of  the  revolution  a 
little  better  when  I  tell  you  that  the  cost 
of  paper  for  making  newspapers  which, 
thirty  years  ago,  was  twelve  to  twenty 
cents  a  pound,  has  steadily  declined  un- 
til now  we  buy  it  for  two  and  a  quarter 
cents  a  pound.  Twenty  years  ago  our 
weekly  paper  bill  was  the  heaviest  bill  we 
had  to  pay,  but  now  it  is  one  of  the  light- 
er ones.  For  two  and  a  quarter  cents  you 
get  a  pound  of  paper  all  fit  and  ready  to 
be  printed.  One  pound  of  this  paper  will 
give  you,  taking  a  page  the  size  of  the 
Tribune,  fifty-five  or  sixty  pages ;  and  as 
a  week-day  edition  of  the  Tribune  is  gen- 
erally twelve  pages,  you  see  you  get  five 
or  six  printed  sheets  out  of  the  two  and 
a  quarter  cents.    That  makes  the  business 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     yg 

profitable.  The  Tribune  is  retailed  at 
three  cents,  and  it  is  sold  at  wholesale  for 
something  like  two  and  a  half  cents — I 
don't  know  precisely  how  much,  but  it  is 
two  and  a  half  to  two  and  three  quarter 
cents ;  and  there  you  have  a  very  hand- 
some difference  between  the  money  ex- 
pended for  the  paper  and  the  money  that 
is  taken  in  for  the  printed  journal.  Now, 
this  is  a  revolution  of  great  consequence 
in  the  business  of  newspaper  making. 
How  far  it  will  tend  to  produce  any 
greater  cheapness  of  newspapers  I  will 
not  now  attempt  to  say.  They  are  al- 
ready sold  very  cheap  considering  their 
other  expenses  besides  the  printing  and 
the  paper,  such  as  the  variety  of  intelli- 
gence, the  cost  of  getting  news,  the  sal- 
aries of  writers,  correspondents,  and 
assistant  editors,  and  the  rent  that  must 
be  paid  in  a  great  city  for  the  extensive 
quarters  that  are  required.  That  is  a 
very  serious  item.  For  instance,  there  is 
the  New  York  Times,  one  of  the  ablest 


8o     THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

and  most  trustworthy  newspapers  in  the 
world,  whose  company  has  lately  been 
reorganized,  so  that,  unlike  some  of  the 
other  large  newspapers,  the  company 
does  not  own  the  building  it  occupies. 
It  has  to  pay  forty  thousand  dollars  rent 
for  the  quarters  to  transact  its  business  in, 
and  I  don't  think  that  is  excessive.  Most 
of  the  large  newspapers,  the  Herald,  the 
Tribune,  the  Sun,  own  their  own  build- 
ings. But,  taking  everything,  I  should 
say  that  the  actual  capital  needed  and 
employed  in  carrying  on  one  of  these  big 
establishments  is  not  less  than  a  million 
dollars.  That  is  necessary  not  to  pay 
the  natural  losses  of  an  enterprise  just 
begun,  but  to  carry  on  the  regular  busi- 
ness, to  run  the  work  at  a  reasonable 
cost,  so  that  you  are  not  swallowed  up 
by  expenses  that  might  be  avoided.  If 
you  ask  how  much  it  would  cost  to  es- 
tablish a  new  journal  entirely,  why,  then 
you  have  got  to  have  a  great  deal  more 
money  ;   but  a  million  is  the  least  with 


MAKING   OF  A   NEWSPAPER  MAN.     gl 

which  a  suitable  outfit  can  be  procured. 
You  must  have  at  least  four  of  those  big 
presses,  costing  forty-five  thousand  dol- 
lars apiece.  Then  you  must  have  electric 
lighting  and  the  outfit  for  that  costs 
something  considerable.  After  you  have 
it,  it  doesn't  cost  you  much  to  produce 
the  electricity ;  that  is,  after  you  have 
got  the  plant.  The  dynamo  is  run  by 
the  steam  engine  which  drives  the 
presses,  and  the  waste  power  that  would 
not  be  used  at  all  suffices  to  keep  the 
dynamo  going  and  to  light  your  whole 
house  with  electricity.  There  is  a  nota- 
ble advantage  in  electricity  for  lighting 
a  newspaper  office.  In  fact,  it  is  indis- 
pensable. The  only  other  means  is  gas. 
In  the  summer  when  the  weather  is  hot, 
if  your  printers  have  their  desks  lighted 
with  gas,  the  heat  becomes  difficult  to 
bear.  When  we  used  to  employ  gas,  in 
July  and  August  there  would  scarcely  be 
a  hot  night  when  one  or  two  of  our  men 
wouldn't  faint  almost  away.     But  now  it 


82     THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

is  all  done  with  electricit}-,  and  we  have 
no  trouble  or  inconvenience  from  excess- 
ive heat. 

Now,  what  I  have  said  relates  to  the 
mechanical  and  intellectual  features  of 
making  a  newspaper  ;  but  there  is  a  ques- 
tion which  precedes  it,  namely :  What 
kind  of  a  newspaper  will  you  make  ?  and 
that  question  may  be  divided  into  two 
parts  :  First,  will  you  make  a  newspaper 
for  sensible  people  ?  or  will  you  make  a 
newspaper  for  fools  ?  Now,  I  would  not 
be  understood  as  intimating  that  there  is 
anything  unworthy  or  below  anybody's 
dignity  in  making  a  newspaper  for  fools. 
In  the  first  place,  there  is  impressive  evi- 
dence to  show  that  the  fools  form  a  large 
part  of  any  community ;  and  we  have 
most  unquestionable  testimony  when  we 
turn  to  the  prophet  Isaiah,  the  greatest, 
the  most  inspired,  and  the  noblest  im- 
agination of  all  the  millennial  prophets. 
He  says  emphatically,  in  speaking  of  the 
way    of    holiness,   that    the    "  wayfaring 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     83 

men,  though  fools,  shall  not  err  therein." 
So  that  it  is  perfectly  right  to  provide 
for  the  fools  in  special  newspapers  ;  and 
that  duty,  as  you  may  have  noticed,  is 
extensively  and  conscientiously  per- 
formed by  gifted  and  conspicuous  indi- 
viduals ;  and  I  have  heard  that  some  of 
them  make  money  by  it.  For  my  part, 
however,  I  find  more  entertainment  in 
making  a  newspaper  that  tries  to  be  of 
the  other  kind.  And  as,  undoubtedly, 
some  of  the  intelligent  young  men  whose 
faces  I  gaze  upon,  are  bound  to  adopt 
the  profession  of  making  newspapers,  I 
suggest  to  them  that  before  they  make 
up  their  minds  and  come  to  a  conclusion 
on  this  important  question  they  should 
reflect  carefully  which  kind  they  find 
most  agreeable  for  their  own  reading. 

The  Sunday  newspaper  is  a  rather 
conspicuous  object,  and  I  have  heard  a 
good  deal  of  discussion  about  it ;  such  as 
whether  it  is  right  to  make  a  Sunday 
newspaper  ;  and  if  it  is  not  right  to  make 


84    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

it,  is  it  right  to  read  it  ?  I  don't  think 
anybody  should  become  a  party  to  a 
thing  that  is  wrong,  by  going  and  buy- 
ing a  newspaper  that  ought  not  to  be 
made  at  all.  But  this  debate,  we  may 
perhaps  say,  has  in  great  part  been  set- 
tled ;  and  although  objectors  to  the  Sun- 
day newspapers  are  still  to  be  found,  the 
public  at  large  seems  to  have  decided 
that  they  want  them  and  will  have  them. 
Anyway,  it  is  an  interesting  circumstance 
that  almost  every  large  newspaper  whose 
daily  edition  we  will  say  sells  fifty  thou- 
sand copies  at  two  or  three  cents,  sells 
on  Sunday  an  edition  of  one  hundred 
thousand  or  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
thousand  or  one  hundred  and  fifty  thou- 
sand at  five  cents,  four  cents  or  three 
cents  and  three  quarters  being  the 
wholesale  price.  Now,  as  long  as  the 
people  will  buy  the  Sunday  papers,  I 
suppose  they  will  be  made.  At  the  same 
time,  considered  as  a  question  of  con- 
science, and  of  moral  and  social  duty,  I 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     85 

am  bound  to  say  that  I  can  not  yield  to 
the  objection.  I  do  not  see  anything 
wrong  either  in  making  or  in  reading  a 
Sunday  newspaper.  In  fact,  if  I  found 
anything  noxious  in  the  Sunday  news- 
paper I  should  be  ready  to  denounce  it ; 
yet,  while  there  is  liable  to  be  something 
you  would  wish  to  have  changed  in 
any  newspaper  and  in  every  newspaper, 
we  do  not  find  any  special  fault  in  the 
Sunday  newspaper.  It  is  a  picture  of 
the  world  as  it  is  ;  of  the  good  men  and 
of  the  bad  men,  the  virtues  and  the 
crimes ;  and  as  the  crimes  of  half  a  dozen 
are  more  startling  and  tend  more  to  ar- 
rest our  attention  than  the  virtues  of  a 
thousand  good  men,  it  is  to  the  crimes 
that  a  great  deal  of  attention  is  neces- 
sarily paid.  But  is  it  wrong  to  report 
and  to  publish  these  things?  Everybody 
will  talk  about  them.  The  newspapers 
could  not  suppress  them  if  they  would ; 
and  if  any  one  newspaper  regularly 
omitted  to  give  an  account  of  interesting 


86    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

swindles,  or  forgeries,  or  murders,  the 
people  would  stop  reading  that  paper 
and  go  off  and  get  one  where  they  could 
find  all  the  news.  Besides,  1  have  been 
led  to  conclude,  in  reasoning  upon  this 
subject,  that  if  the  Divine  Providence 
permits  such  things  to  happen,  we,  who 
are  merely  the  witnesses  of  its  operation, 
may  certainly  stop  a  moment  and  report 
the  facts  to  each  other. 

Now,  a  newspaper  is  naturally  the 
organ  of  a  party,  political  or  other.  Its 
editors,  its  conductors,  hold  certain  ideas, 
certain  principles,  certain  social,  political, 
religious  principles ;  and,  in  discussing 
the  events  of  the  times,  they  will  express 
those  principles.  Now,  ought  a  news- 
paper to  stick  to  its  party  always  ?  Here 
we  will  suppose  is  an  editor  who  is  an 
advocate  of  what  is  called  free  trade. 
Some  of  you  people  understand  what 
that  means,  I  presume  ;  and  he  is  in  the 
habit  of  presenting  the  good  effect  which 
the  adoption  of  free  trade  would  have. 


MAKIXG   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAX.     8/ 

He  goes,  therefore,  with  the  party  that 
is  most  favorable  to  free  trade.  But  by 
and  by  the  party  professing  free  trade 
does  not  do  it ;  what  is  he  going  to  say 
then  ?  Shall  he  stand  by  the  party,  or 
shall  he  express  his  own  sincere,  honest 
sentiment,  and  say  the  party  is  wrong, 
and  he  is  against  it  in  that  thing?  Well, 
now,  human  nature  is  so  constituted  and 
the  weaknesses  of  men's  hearts — I  don't 
think  women's  hearts  are  so  weak  in  that 
way — lead  them  often  to  stay  in  a  club,  a 
church,  or  any  organization  that  they  do 
not  agree  with  any  longer.  But  it  seems 
to  me  that  with  a  newspaper  there  ought 
to  be  some  dividing  line,  some  certain 
point  where  it  will  manifest  its  independ- 
ence, if  it  does  not  violently  declare  it. 
There  should  be  in  the  editor,  the  pub- 
lic guide,  a  power  of  determination,  and 
there  should  be  intelligence.  He  should 
know  what  his  principles  are,  and  he 
should  express  them  clearly,  so  that  other 
people  may  know  them.     There  should 


88     THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

be  faithfulness,  and  not  a  new  illustration 
of  what  Ben  Wade — old  Senator  Wade, 
of  Ohio — said  in  the  Senate  one  day, 
speaking  of  Senator  Benjamin,  of  Louisi- 
ana, when  he  described  him  as  "  a  He- 
brew with  Egyptian  principles."  At  that 
very  time  there  were  plenty  of  such  He- 
brews, and  there  were  plenty  of  North- 
ern newspapers  and  politicians  hating 
slavery  in  their  hearts,  who  stood  up 
and,  without  a  blush,  pressed  by  neces- 
sity, defended  slavery  more  or  less  frank- 
ly. Now,  I  do  not  like  it.  The  news- 
paper must  be  independent  of  its  party, 
or  it  is  not  the  ideal  sort  of  newspaper 
that  we  want  to  praise  very  much.  And 
nobody  who  remembers  it  can  ever  for- 
get— I  am  sure  that  my  friend  Mr.  Sage 
remembers  it  distinctly — that  noble  ut- 
terance of  Horace  Greeley  when  the 
Whig  party  had  nominated  General 
Scott  on  a  pro-slavery  platform.  Greeley 
said,  "  I  spit  on  the  platform  ! "  He  was 
hotly   abused,   and    yet    he    remained    a 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.     go 

member  of  the  party,  and  nobody 
thought  of  turning  him  out,  hardly  even 
when  he  afterward  became  a  Democratic 
candidate. 

Now,  allow  me  a  word  as  to  the  edu- 
cation that  a  young  journalist  should 
work  for.  In  the  first  place,  he  should 
learn  everything  that  it  is  possible  for 
him  to  know.  I  never  saw  a  newspaper 
man  who  knew  too  much,  except  those 
who  knew  too  many  things  that  were  not 
so.  I  am  myself  a  partisan  of  the  strict, 
old-fashioned  classical  education.  The 
man  who  knows  Greek  and  Latin,  and 
knows  it,  I  don't  mean  who  has  read  six 
books  of  Virgil  for  a  college  examination, 
but  the  man  who  can  pick  up  Virgil  or 
Tacitus  without  going  to  his  dictionary ; 
and  the  man  who  can  read  the  Iliad  in 
Greek  without  boggling,  and  if  he  can 
read  Aristotle  and  Plato  all  the  better — 
that  man  may  be  trusted  to  edit  a  news- 
paper. But,  above  all,  he  should  know 
his  own  language,  the  English  language. 


go    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER   MAKING. 

The  more  you  understand  it,  the  more 
you  go  down  into  the  depths  of  it,  the 
more  familiar  you  are  with  the  roots  and 
the  complications  and  the  developments 
of  it,  the  more  you  will  look  at  it  with 
wonder  and  admiration.  The  man  who 
is  going  to  publish  a  daily  manual  of 
news  and  facts  and  ideas  and  truths,  or 
even  lies,  in  that  language,  should  know 
the  language  thoroughly.  Otherwise  he 
may  sometimes  say  what  he  does  not 
mean.  I  have  known  that  to  happen.  I 
remember  once  we  had  in  the  Tribune  a 
smart  young  fellow  named  Henderson. 
He  was  afterward  a  rather  conspicuous 
Republican  politician  in  Michigan.  He 
had  written  something  one  day  that  Mr. 
Greeley  didn't  like.  Greeley  came  in 
and  said,  "  Henderson,  did  you  write 
that?"  "  Yes,  sir,"  said  he.  "Go  away 
from  here  !  I  don't  want  you  here  any 
more ;  I  discharge  you  ! "  The  next 
morning  I  came  down  to  the  office  and 
found  Henderson  sitting  at  his  desk  and 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER   MAN. 


91 


working  tranquilly  away  as  usual.  I 
said :  "  How  is  this  ?  I  thought  Mr. 
Greeley  discharged  you." 

"  Yes,  sir,  he  did  ;  but  I  didn't  put 
confidence  in  all  that  he  said." 

Then  there  are  a  great  many  sciences 
of  the  present  day  that  the  young  news- 
paper man  ought  to  learn.  He  ought  to 
know  the  practical  sciences  above  all, 
especially  chemistry  and  electricity  ;  his- 
tory he  should  know,  too,  particularly 
American  history,  the  American  Consti- 
tution, and  constitutional  law.  About 
political  economy  I  don't  speak  so  em- 
phatically. Carlyle  said  it  was  a  dismal 
science,  and  I  have  noticed  that  a  great 
many  young  men  who  had  studied  it 
very  carefully,  and  who  could  discuss  it 
with  much  emphasis,  didn't  always  seem 
to  know  so  much  themselves.  But  it  is 
there,  and  it  must  be  attended  to,  no 
doubt. 

The  earlier  discussions  about  the  art 
and  science  of  making  newspapers  have 


92    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

dwelt  always  upon  the  importance  of 
looking  out  for  the  news,  and  not  being 
beaten  in  the  news.  That  is  certainly 
very  desirable  ;  but  fortunately  the  pro- 
curing of  the  news  is  provided  for  by 
news  agencies  or  associations,  in  which 
several  newspapers  combine  and  provide 
for  supplying  themselves  with  the  news  ; 
so  that  the  editor  of  each  individual 
paper  is  left  in  comparative  leisure  to 
attend  to  study  and  discussion,  and  the 
more  important  duties  that  he  has  on  his 
hands.  For  instance,  within  the  last  two 
years  some  eight  or  ten  papers  in  the 
city  of  New  York  have  organized  an  as- 
sociation for  supplying  themselves  with 
the  news  of  New  York  and  its  vicinity. 
Formerly  we  each  of  us  kept  half  a  dozen 
reporters,  I  don't  know  how  many,  who 
were  employed  for  that  particular  duty  ; 
but  now  this  association,  conducted  by 
these  united  newspapers,  provides  every 
one  with  all  the  news  that  is  to  be  found, 
and  they  are  all  supplied  at  reduced  ex- 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN. 


93 


pense.  Moreover,  the  same  system  pre- 
vails with  regard  to  the  general  news  of 
the  world  and  the  country.  For  in- 
stance, the  next  day  after  an  election  in 
the  State  of  New  York,  we  are  able, 
through  the  operation  of  this  associative 
arrangement,  to  publish  the  figures  of 
every  place  in  the  State,  every  county, 
every  important  town,  every  voting  pre- 
cinct, if  that  should  be  necessary.  That 
emancipates  the  manager  of  the  paper 
and  the  editor  of  the  paper  from  the 
necessity  of  the  strenuous  attention,  the 
watchful  vigilance,  which  they  formerly 
were  obliged  to  apply  to  their  news  col- 
umns. So  that  now  they  can  make  the 
paper  more  interesting  by  correspond- 
ence, and  literary  or  scientific  or  roman- 
tic articles,  and  they  can  do  it  in  the 
same  time  that  used  to  be  absorbed  in 
getting  the  petty  news  of  the  town,  and 
in  reporting,  for  instance,  that  Mrs.  Mc- 
Tabby  had  fallen  down  in  the  street  and 

broken  her  toe.     The  consequence  is  that 
13 


94 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


not  quite  so  many  men  are  employed  on 
the  newspapers,  but  they  are  apt  to  be 
better  educated  and  more  capable  men. 
I  ought  to  have  said,  when  I  was  speak- 
ing of  the  decline  in  the  cost  of  making 
newspapers,  that  it  has  not  been  accom- 
panied by  a  decline  in  the  salaries  of  the 
men  employed,  but  rather  by  an  increase 
of  them.  The  writers,  correspondents,  re- 
porters, although  considerably  affected 
by  the  hard  times  that  we  have  had  dur- 
ing the  past  two  years,  are,  on  the  whole, 
better  paid  than  they  were  five  years  be- 
fore. But  when  I  say  men,  I  am  guilty 
of  a  little  inaccuracy.  There  are  now  a 
great  many  ladies  employed  on  the  news- 
papers, not  only  in  New  York  city,  but, 
I  dare  say,  almost  everywhere  else. 
They  are  employed  as  reporters,  as  writ- 
ers, as  artists,  and  they  are  valuable  as- 
sistants in  almost  every  department. 
There  is  only  one  difficulty  about  it ; 
they  don't  stay.  When  you  have  found 
a  lady  about  whom  you  are  convinced 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN. 


95 


it  is  impossible  to  replace  her,  then  she 
goes  and  marries  some  rich  man,  espe- 
cially if  she  is  pretty  ;  and  there  the  poor 
editor  is  left,  helpless  and  without  con- 
solation. 

Another  interesting  question  is  the 
illustrations,  the  pictures.  You  have 
noticed,  of  course,  that  all  the  newspa- 
pers now  abound  in  pictures,  and  there 
is  no  newspaper  so  poor  that  it  can't 
print  just  as  many  pictures  as  it  likes. 
Twenty  years  ago,  if  we  wanted  to  print 
the  portrait  of  any  distinguished  man, 
Senator  Hill  or  Mr.  Cleveland,  for  in- 
stance, why,  we  had  first  to  get  a  photo- 
graph, then  we  had  to  get  a  draughts- 
man, then  a  wood  engraver,  and  then 
after  the  engraving  was  cut  in  the  wood 
we  had  to  have  a  stereotype  made  of 
it  before  we  could  print  it.  It  was  a 
very  expensive  operation.  I  should 
think,  to  make  a  good  and  adequately 
extensive  portrait  of  Mr.  Cleveland,  after 
the  old  fashion,  would  cost  forty  or  fifty 


^6    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

dollars ;  while  now,  such  is  the  progress 
of  the  practical  sciences  and  arts,  we 
don't  need  to  have  a  wood  engraver  at 
all.  You  don't  even  need  a  draughts- 
man. You  put  your  photograph  by 
means  of  the  photographic  camera  on  a 
zinc  plate,  which  is  prepared  for  the  pur- 
pose you  require.  That  is,  it  is  covered 
with  a  gelatinous  and  sensitized  sub- 
stance sufficiently  thick  for  the  purpose. 
On  that  you  put  your  photograph,  and 
then  you  apply  an  acid  which  eats  the 
features  of  Mr.  Cleveland  and  his  noble 
figure  into  the  zinc  plate  ;  and  there  it 
is  finished  for  you,  without  a  hand 
touching  it,  except  in  removing  it  from 
one  plate  to  the  other ;  and  all  you  have 
to  do  is  to  screw  it  upon  a  wooden  block, 
and  the  thing  is  done.  And  what  is  more, 
instead  of  costing  you  thirty  or  forty  dol- 
lars, the  finished  picture  costs  you  one 
dollar  and  twenty-five  cents !  This  is 
the  age  of  experiment,  and,  as  I  said,  of 
revolution  also.     You  can  afford  a  great 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN. 


97 


many  pictures,  and  some  of  the  most  im- 
portant newspapers  of  the  country  de- 
vote themselves  to  fancy  pictures.  They 
have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  invent  a 
press  which  prints  pictures  in  different 
colors,  so  they  turn  out  from  one  ma- 
chine, without  moving  the  form  at  all, 
pictures  that  are  red  and  green  and  yel- 
low, and  all  the  rainbow.  That  is  pretty 
expensive,  because,  as  I  have  said,  it  re- 
quires a  special  press,  and  it  has  to  be 
operated  slowly  and  carefully.  But  they 
think  that  it  is  a  fine  thing.  There  are 
lots  of  pictures  of  men  dancing  on  tight 
ropes,  for  instance,  and  ladies  dancing 
without  any  tight  ropes.  These  are  sup- 
posed to  be  very  popular.  I  dare  say 
they  are.  I  know  of  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  newspapers  in  the  country 
which  publishes  perhaps  an  actual  edi- 
tion of  sixty  thousand  on  week  days,  but 
on  Sunday  it  sells  two  hundred  and 
thirty  thousand  or  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand,  mainly,  as  they  think,   on   ac- 


q8   the  art  of  newspaper  making. 

count  of  the  pictures.  Now,  I  am  an 
old-fashioned  expert.  I  don't  believe  so 
many  pictures  are  going  to  be  required 
for  any  great  portion  of  the  next  cen- 
tury. It  is  a  passing  fashion.  It  seems 
to  me  that  it  has  gone  by  already  to  a 
considerable  extent.  I  asked  Mr.  White- 
law  Reid  one  day  what  was  his  opinion, 
and  he  said  he  was  against  these  pic- 
tures, that  they  didn't  add  anything  to 
the  purpose  of  the  newspaper,  which  is 
to  convey  intelligence  and  enlighten 
thought.  Any  picture,  he  said,  which  is 
in  itself  of  the  nature  of  news,  which 
gives  you  the  likeness  of  a  distinguished 
man  whose  portrait  you  wish  to  see,  or 
anything  which  really  illustrates  to  your 
mind  an  event  of  the  day,  that  is  a  legiti- 
mate newspaper  picture.  "  But  the 
fancy,  fantastic,  devil-to-pay  pictures,"  he 
said,  "  those  I  am  not  in  favor  of."  I 
think  he  is  entirely  right  on  that  subject, 
as  on  many  others. 

There    is    one    other    curious    point 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN. 


99 


which  I  passed  over  without  reflection 
when  discussing  the  present  cheapness  of 
printing  paper,  and  which  I  will  come 
back  to  now.  It  is  a  pretty  interesting 
curiosity.  Paper  is  so  cheap  that,  sup- 
posing you  are  interested  in  proving  that 
the  circulation  of  your  newspaper  is 
something  immense,  enormous,  you  can 
do  it  for  certain  with  very  slight  expense. 
Having  got  your  plates,  your  presses, 
and  everything  there,  you  can  print  a 
couple  of  hundred  thousand  extra  papers 
at  a  cost  which  is  almost  nothing  com- 
pared to  the  advertising  you  may  get 
from  it ;  and  then,  instead  of  a  circulation 
of  five  hundred  thousand  every  morning, 
you  can  show  a  circulation  of  seven  hun- 
dred thousand.  The  utility  of  that  mass 
of  printed  papers  is  not  destroyed.  They 
are  not  sold,  to  be  sure,  but  their  print- 
ing is  recorded  truthfully  by  the  presses, 
and  they  show  in  the  figures  of  your  cir- 
culation, which  the  advertisers  love  to 
examine.     Then  you  can  transport  them, 


lOO   THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

SO  I  have  heard,  let  us  say  to  Glens  Falls, 
where  we  will  suppose  there  is  a  factory 
in  which  they  make  paper  boxes ;  and 
you  can  send  your  two  hundred  thou- 
sand sheets,  which  you  have  printed  for 
advertising  display,  and  have  them 
brought  back  to  you  in  the  form  of  paper 
boxes,  that  are  really  useful  and  may  be 
sold  for  something.  The  advertisers  are 
much  impressed,  but  they  don't  get  the 
boxes. 

I  ought  to  give,  perhaps,  some  facts 
about  the  artists  who  are  now  employed 
on  so  many  papers.  Many  of  them  are 
women.  Women  excel,  particularly  in 
drawing  fashion  pictures ;  and  a  clever 
girl  who  really  has  talent  will  get  per- 
haps forty  or  fifty  dollars  a  week  as  a 
steady  salary.  That  is,  she  can  have  it 
until  she  gets  married  and  goes  off.  The 
salary  of  a  good  artist,  who  draws  what- 
ever is  required  in  a  paper,  will  be  from 
twenty  to  one  hundred  dollars  a  week. 
He  makes  his  pictures  so  that  they  can 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    lol 

be  transferred  to  the  plate,  and  that  is  all 
he  has  to  do.  The  expense  of  these  pic- 
tures greatly  varies.  The  Herald  prob- 
ably spends  in  preparing  its  pictures  two 
thousand  to  four  thousand  dollars  a  week. 
They  are  mostly  used  on  Sunday,  though 
on  special  occasions  they  are  put  in  liber- 
ally on  other  days.  The  Herald  prints 
more  pictures,  and  generally  better  ones, 
than  any  of  the  other  papers. 

In  the  organization  of  a  newspaper 
there  are  three  kinds  of  men  who  are  of 
special  value  besides  the  business  mana- 
ger, who  is  necessarily  of  the  greatest 
importance.  I  refer  now  to  three  kinds 
of  the  intellectual  workers,  and  the  first 
of  them  that  T  desire  to  mention  is  the 
reporters.  A  very  good  reporter  can 
earn  one  hundred  dollars  a  week,  and  I 
suppose  that  in  any  well-organized  news- 
paper office  there  are  perhaps  thirty  ca- 
pable  men  whose  pay  will  average  from 
forty  to  sixty  dollars  a  week,  and  whose 
duty  is  simply  reporting.  Then  there  are 
14 


I02    THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

many  others  of  the  sort  of  reporters  who 
skirmish  around  and  are  employed  to-day 
by  one  paper  and  to-morrow  by  another, 
and  are  paid  for  the  matter  that  they  de- 
liver. The  qualifications  of  the  reporter 
you  can  not  estimate  too  highly.  In  the 
first  place  he  must  know  the  truth  when 
he  hears  it  and  sees  it.  There  are  a  great 
many  men  who  are  born  without  that 
faculty,  unfortunately.  But  there  are 
some  men  that  a  lie  can  not  deceive  ;  and 
that  is  a  very  precious  gift  for  a  reporter 
as  well  as  for  anybody  else.  The  man 
who  has  it  is  sure  to  live  long  and  pros- 
per ;  especially  if  he  is  able  to  tell  the 
truth  which  he  sees,  to  state  the  fact  or 
the  discovery  that  he  has  been  sent  out 
after,  in  a  clear  and  vivid  and  interesting 
manner.  The  invariable  law  of  the  news- 
paper is  to  be  interesting.  Suppose  you 
tell  all  the  truths  of  science  in  a  way 
that  bores  the  reader ;  what  is  the  good  ? 
The  truths  don't  stay  in  the  mind,  and 
nobody  thinks  any  better  of  you  because 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    103 

you  have  told  him  the  truth  tediously. 
The  telling-  must  be  vivid  and  animating. 
The  reporter  must  give  his  story  in  such 
a  way  that  you  know  he  feels  its  qualities 
and  events,  and  is  interested  in  them. 

Next  in  importance  to  the  reporter 
is  the  man  whose  duty  it  is  to  read  the 
newspapers  of  this  country  and  other 
countries  and  take  out  of  them  the  things 
that  his  own  paper  wants.  Mr.  Greeley 
used  to  say  that  the  exchange  reader  was 
the  greatest  man  on  the  newspaper,  and 
if  all  the  good  things  were  got  out  of  the 
other  papers  it  didn't  make  any  differ- 
ence whatever  whether  there  was  any- 
thing else  or  not.  But  that  was  going 
rather  too  far.  INIr.  Greeley  was  a  man 
of  delicate  humor,  and  sometimes  sought 
to  impress  a  truth  by  an  apt  exaggera- 
tion. 

Next  after  the  newspaper  reader,  or 
exchange  editor,  as  he  is  sometimes 
called,  comes  what  we  call  the  city  ed- 
itor.    He  is  the  head  of  the  local  depart- 


104 


THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 


ment.  He  looks  after  all  the  news  of  the 
vicinity  or  locality  or  town  or  neighbor- 
hood. He  employs  the  reporters  and 
pays  them,  and  he  has  to  be  a  man  of 
great  sense,  of  alertness  of  mind,  of  fidel- 
ity to  his  duty,  and  of  untiring  industry  ; 
and  he  enjoys  also  what  may  sometimes 
be  an  advantage,  that  he  is  the  man  with 
whom  all  the  fault  is  found.  He  had  no 
business  to  have  it  so.  Then  there  is  the 
managing  editor.  He  is  a  gentleman  of 
real  importance,  of  vital  importance.  He 
looks  after  the  making  up  of  the  paper. 
He  looks  after  the  correspondents ;  he 
employs  them.  He  determines  how 
much  the  correspondent  in  Paris  shall  be 
paid  for  a  particular  contribution,  and  he 
has  to  see  that  everj^body  under  him 
does  his  duty  and  does  it  at  the  right 
time  ;  for  a  duty  done  at  the  wrong  time 
is  about  the  same  as  a  duty  entirely  neg- 
lected. Then  next  to  him  is  of  course 
the  editor.  He  is  the  head  of  the  paper; 
he  determines  what  its  purpose  shall  be. 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    105 

He  determines  whether  it  shall  be  for 
prohibition  or  high  license  ;  whether  it 
shall  stand  by  the  party  in  a  wrong  pol- 
icy or  not.  He  is  the  final  authority  in 
everything. 

Well,  now,  there  is  one  point  that  I 
want  particularly  to  impress  upon  you, 
young  gentlemen,  and  that  is  that  every 
one  of  these  men— the  reporters,  the  as- 
sistants, the  editor,  every  one  of  them— 
while  they  require  the  literary  and  scien- 
tific education  that  I  have  been  speaking 
of,  require  also  a  business  education.  It 
is  only  by  being  put  through  the  mill  of 
business  that  a  man  acquires  the  science 
of  this  world,  and  knows  how  to  deal 
with  business,  and  to  consider  business 
questions  of  every  kind.  I  can  not  ex- 
press my  sense  of  this  too  strongly.  In 
fact,  I  have  always  felt — I  mention  the 
circumstance  merely  as  an  illustration — 
that  the  six  years  I  worked  in  a  dry- 
goods  store  in  Buffalo,  as  a  boy,  have 
been  worth  to  me  more,  as  a  matter  of 


I06   THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

practical  education,  than  some  other 
years  passed  elsewhere  in  other  pur- 
suits. It  is  very  desirable  indeed  that 
the  newspaper  man,  who  has  to  deal 
with  the  actual  affairs  of  this  world, 
should  know  them  and  should  know  them 
personally.  And  it  is  very  desirable, 
also,  that  he  should  have  that  knowledge 
of  human  nature  which  can  not  be  gained 
so  well,  so  far  as  my  experience  goes,  as 
in  a  wholesale  and  retail  business  estab- 
lishment. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  things 
that  the  editor  of  a  newspaper  or  a  news- 
paper maker  has  to  deal  with  is  the  liter- 
ature of  the  day,  and  this  includes  not 
merely  the  books  published,  but  espe- 
cially what  appears  in  newspapers  and 
magazines — the  fiction,  the  poetry,  the 
fancy  articles.  The  newspaper  man 
ought  to  be  well  informed  in  these  things, 
and  he  ought  to  have  cultivated  in  him- 
self a  sentiment  of  art  and  a  love  of 
beauty,  because  the  sense  of  beauty  will 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    107 

enable  him  to  judge  of  all  sorts  of  pro- 
ductions of  art,  even  though  he  may  not 
be  technically  and  thoroughly  familiar 
with  them.  There  is  often  expressed  an 
idea  that  this  sort  of  popular  literature 
is  declining  in  quality,  going  out  in  fact 
— especially  the  poetry.  People  often 
come  to  me  and  say  that  the  poetry  of 
the  present  day  is  not  so  good  as  it  used 
to  be  when  they  were  youngsters.  Well, 
if  you  will  allow  me,  Mr.  President,  to 
vary  the  monotony  of  this  dry  statement 
of  facts  by  reading  a  little  poetry,  I  shall 
be  glad  to  do  it,  because  I  want  to  show 
you  that  there  is  produced  among  us  to- 
day as  good  an  article  in  that  line  as  ever 
has  been  produced  in  the  past.  First,  I 
would  like  to  read  a  poem  of  a  rather 
humorous  character.  I  cut  it  out  of  the 
Hartford  Courant : 

Under  the  slighting  light  of  the  yellow  sun  of  Octo- 
ber, 

Close  by  the  side  of  the  car  track,  a  gang  of  Dagos 
were  working ; 


Io8   THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

Pausing  a  moment  to  catch  a  note  of  their  liquid 

Italian, 
Faintly  I  heard  an  echo  of  Rome's  imperial  accents, 
Broken  down  forms  of  Latin  words  from  the  Senate 

and  Forum, 
Now  smoothed  over  by  use  to  the  musical  lingua 

Romana. 
Then  the  thought  came.  Why,  these  are  the  heirs  of 

the  Romans  ; 
These  are  the  sons  of  the  men  who  founded  the 

empire  of  Caesar ; 
These  are  they  whose  fathers  carried  the  conquer- 
ing eagles 
Over  all  Gaul  and  across  the  sea  to  Ultima  Thule  ; 
The  race  type  persists  unchanged  in  their  eyes  and 

profiles  and  figures. 
Muscular,  short,  and  thick-set,  with  prominent  noses, 

recalling 
"  Romanes  rerum  dominos,  gentemque  togatam." 
See,   Labinus  is    swinging  a  pick    with  rhythmical 

motion ; 
Yonder    one    pushing  the  shovel    might  be  Julius 

Caesar — 
Lean,  deep-eyed,  broad-browed,  and  bald,  a  man  of 

a  thousand ; 
Further  along  stands  the  jolly  Horatius  Flaccus  ; 
Grim  and  grave,  with  rings  in  his  ears,  see  Cato  the 

censor. 

On  the  side  of  the  street  in  proud  and  gloomy  seclu- 
sion. 

Bossing  the  job,  stood  a  Celt ;  the  race  enslaved  by 
the  legions. 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    109 

Sold  in  the  markets  of  Rome  to  meet  the  expenses 
of  Caesar. 

And,  as  I  loitered,  the  Celt  cried  out :  "  Warruk,  ye 
Dagos  ! 

Full  up  your  shovel,  Paythro,  ye  hathen  !  I'll  dock 
yees  a  quarther." 

This  he  said  to  the  one  who  resembled  the  great 
imperator ; 

Meekly  the  dignified  Roman  kept  on  patiently  dig- 
ging- 
Such  are  the  changes  and  chances  the  centuries 
bring  to  the  nations. 

Surely  the  ups  and  downs  of  the  world  are  past  cal- 
culation. 

"  Possibly,"  thus  I  thought  to  myself,  "  the  yoke  of 
the  Irish 

May  in  turn  be  lifted  from  us,  in  the  tenth  genera- 
tion. 

Now  the  Celt  is  on  top,  but  Time  may  bring  his 
revenges. 

Turning  the  Fenian  down,  once  more  to  be  bossed 
by  a  Dago." 


Now  let  us  hear  a  strain  of  a  higher 
mood.  I  found  my  copy  of  it  in  the  San 
Francisco  Argonaut.  I  dare  say  you 
have  all  seen  it.  It  is  called  "  High  Tide 
at  Gettysburg  " : 
15 


no   THE  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

A  cloud  possessed  the  hollow  field, 
The  gathering  battle's  smoky  shield  ; 
Athwart  the  gloom  the  lightning  flashed, 
And  through  the  cloud  some  horsemen  dashed, 
And  from  the  heights  the  thunder  pealed. 

Then  at  the  brief  command  of  Lee, 
Moved  out  that  matchless  infantry. 

With  Pickett  leading  grandly  down, 

To  rush  against  the  roaring  crown 
Of  those  dread  heights  of  destiny. 

Far  heard  above  the  angry  guns, 
A  cr>'  across  the  tumult  runs : 

The  voice  that  rang  through  Shiloh's  woods. 

And  Chickamauga's  solitudes : 
The  fierce  South  cheering  on  her  sons. 

Ah,  how  the  withering  tempest  blew 

Against  the  front  of  Pettigru  ! 

A  khamsin  wind  that  scorched  and  singed, 
Like  that  infernal  flame  that  fringed 

The  British  squares  at  Waterloo  ! 

A  thousand  fell  where  Kemper  led  ; 

A  thousand  died  where  Garnett  bled ; 
In  blinding  flame  and  strangling  smoke. 
The  remnant  through  the  batteries  broke. 

And  crossed  the  works  with  Armistead. 

"  Once  more  in  Glory's  van  with  me  !  " 

Virginia  cries  to  Tennessee  ; 

"  We  two  together,  come  what  may. 
Shall  stand  upon  those  works  to-day ! " 

The  reddest  day  in  history. 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    m 

Brave  Tennessee  !     Reckless  the  way, 
Virginia  heard  her  comrade  say, 

"  Close  round  this  rent  and  riddled  rag  !  " 

What  time  she  set  her  battle  flag 
Amid  the  guns  of  Doubleday. 

But  who  shall  break  the  guards  that  wait 

Before  the  awful  face  of  Fate  ? 

The  tattered  standards  of  the  South 
Were  shriveled  at  the  cannon's  mouth, 

And  all  her  hopes  were  desolate. 

In  vain  the  Tennesseean  set 
His  breast  against  the  bayonet ; 

In  vain  Virginia  charged  and  raged, 

A  tigress  in  her  wrath  uncaged, 
Till  all  the  hill  was  red  and  wet ! 

Above  the  bayonets  mixed  and  crossed 

Men  saw  a  gray,  gigantic  ghost 
Receding  through  the  battle  cloud, 
And  heard  across  the  tempest  loud 

The  death-cr}'  of  a  nation  lost ! 

The  brave  went  down  !     Without  disgrace 

They  leaped  to  ruin's  red  embrace ; 
They  only  heard  fame's  thunder  wake, 
And  saw  the  dazzling  sunburst  break 

In  smiles  on  Glory's  bloody  face  ! 

They  fell  who  lifted  up  a  hand. 

And  bade  the  sun  in  heaven  to  stand ; 

They  smote  and  fell  who  set  the  bars 

Against  the  progress  of  the  stars. 
And  stayed  the  march  of  Motherland. 


112    THE   ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

They  stood  who  saw  the  future  come 
On  through  the  fight's  delirium  ; 

They  smote  and  stood  who  held  the  hope 

Of  nations  on  that  slippery  slope, 
Amid  the  cheers  of  Christendom  ! 

God  lives  !     He  forged  the  iron  will 
That  clutched  and  held  that  trembling  hill ! 
God  lives  and  reigns !     He  built  and  lent 
The  heights  for  Freedom's  battlement, 
Where  floats  her  flag  in  triumph  still ! 

Fold  up  the  banners  !     Smelt  the  guns  ! 
Love  rules.     Her  gentler  purpose  runs. 

A  mighty  mother  turns  in  tears 

The  pages  of  her  battle  years, 
Lamenting  all  her  fallen  sons  ! 

As  long  as  such  things  can  be  pro- 
duced in  the  newspapers  of  the  country, 
there  is  no  danger  that  the  love  of  art 
and  beauty  or  the  spirit  of  patriotism 
can  die  out. 

There  is  one  point  more,  with  which 
I  will  close.  The  value  of  the  free  press 
is  not  now  sufficiently  appreciated  in 
this  country.  It  is  only  some  particular 
circumstance,  some  unusual  occurrence, 
that  can  make  it  rise  clearly  before  the 


MAKING   OF  A    NEWSPAPER  MAN.    113 

eyes  of  us  all.  I  don't  know  that  I  can 
state  it  with  sufficient  distinctness,  but  in 
my  judgment  the  highest  function  of  the 
press  is  that  at  last  it  forms  the  final  bar- 
rier which  stands  between  the  people 
and  any  gross  wrong  that  may  be  at- 
tempted, by  a  dominant  party  or  by  a 
ruling  public  favorite.  If  such  a  circum- 
stance should  ever  happen — and  God 
grant  that  it  may  not ! — the  mission  of 
the  press,  lifting  its  voice  in  defense  of 
the  Constitution  and  in  defense  of  the 
spirit  of  liberty,  will  be  recognized  ;  and 
the  free  press  will  be  appreciated  as  the 
defender  of  the  public  welfare,  of  the 
Constitution,  and  of  Liberty  itself. 

And  now  let  me  finish  with  two  or 
three  maxims  which  seem  to  me  of  value 
to  a  newspaper  maker  : 

I.  Never  be  in  a  hurry. 

II.  Hold  fast  to  the  Constitution. 

III.  Stand  by  the  Stars  and  Stripes. 
Above  all,  stand  for  Liberty,  whatever 
happens. 


114   ^^^  ART  OF  NEWSPAPER  MAKING. 

IV.  A  word  that  is  not  spoken  never 
does  any  mischief. 

V.  All  the  goodness  of  a  good  egg 
can  not  make  up  for  the  badness  of  a 
bad  one. 

VI.  If  you  find  you  have  been  wrong, 
don't  fear  to  say  so. 

There  is  a  tradition  in  some  news- 
papers of  the  old  school  that  you  must 
pretend  to  a  silly  infallibility,  and  never 
admit  you  have  been  wrong.  That  is  a 
silly  rule.  If  a  man  has  not  the  moral 
courage  to  say  "  Yes,  I  was  wrong,  and 
I  don't  now  believe  what  I  said  at  some 
former  time  " ;  if  he  has  not  courage  to 
say  that,  he  had  better  retire  from  busi- 
ness, and  never  try  to  make  another 
newspaper. 

THE    END. 


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ICT  2  9  1954 

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